Federal Polar Bear Research Critically Flawed, Argue Forecasting Experts Research done by the U.S. Department of the Interior to determine if global warming threatens the polar bear population is so flawed that it cannot be used to justify listing the polar bear as an endangered species, according to a study being published later this year in Interfaces, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®). On April 30, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ordered the Interior Department to decide by May 15 whether polar bears should be listed under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. Professor J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School says, “To list a species that is currently in good health as an endangered species requires valid forecasts that its population would decline to levels that threaten its viability. In fact, the polar bear populations have been increasing rapidly in recent decades due to hunting restrictions. Assuming these restrictions remain, the most appropriate forecast is to assume that the upward trend would continue for a few years, then level off. “These studies are meant to inform the US Fish and Wildlife Service about listing the polar bear as endangered. After careful examination, my co-authors and I were unable to find any references to works providing evidence that the forecasting methods used in the reports had been previously validated. In essence, they give no scientific basis for deciding one way or the other about the polar bear.” Prof. Armstrong and colleagues originally undertook their audit at the request of the State of Alaska. The subsequent study, “Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public Policy Forecasting Audit,” is by Prof. Armstrong, Kesten G. Green of Monash University in Australia, and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It is scheduled to appear in the September/October issue of the INFORMS journal Interfaces....
Law firm vows to sue if U.S. links climate to polar bear's survival A Sacramento law firm known for its conservative advocacy is poised to join the political melee over the fate of the polar bear, vowing Wednesday to sue the government if global warming is cited as a threat to the species. The Pacific Legal Foundation's warning comes in response to a much-anticipated decision next week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on whether to protect Alaskan polar bears under the Endangered Species Act. The service faces a court-ordered deadline of May 15 for that ruling. At issue is growing debate over how aggressively government should act to protect wildlife threatened by climate change. In the case of the polar bear, neither side disputes that the Arctic is changing. But they disagree about the effect on polar bears. A similar issue was decided last month when the California Fish and Game Commission rejected a petition to protect the American pika in response to threats posed by climate change. Lots of evidence shows that the pika's high Sierra habitat will shrink as temperatures warm. But a decline in the pika's numbers has not yet been documented in California as a result. Reed Hopper, a foundation attorney, claimed polar bears are thriving and already adequately protected. "This listing of the polar bear really isn't about the polar bear," he said. "This is a political ploy on the part of activist groups to try to hijack global warming policy from the hands of Congress and to put it into the hands of the courts."....
Conservationists, developer reach major Calif. land deal A group of environmentalists and the owners of a large stretch of wilderness have reached a deal that would set aside the largest parcel of land for conservation in California history. After years of legal tussles, conservationists including the Sierra Club have agreed not to challenge proposed development on the sprawling Tejon Ranch north of Los Angeles in exchange for close to 240,000 acres, in a deal to be announced Thursday. At 375 square miles, the preserve of desert, woodlands and grasslands would be eight times the size of San Francisco and nearly the size of Los Angeles, said Bill Corcoran, the Sierra Club's senior regional representative. "There is, in my opinion, no other place like it in California - it's unrivaled in the diversity of native wildlife and plants," said Corcoran, who helped negotiate the deal. "Tejon is key to us because it's the only place where the Sierra Nevadas, the coastal range and Mojave Desert and Central Valley all meet." The Tejon Ranch Co. has been trying for years to develop three projects, or 10 percent of the 270,000 acre ranch, while appeasing environmentalists....
Al Gore And Climate Ka-Ching Al Gore blames the Burma tragedy on global warming despite growing evidence to the contrary. Could the hype be related to his financial interests? Except, as we recently noted, the trend in the world's oceans — as shown by measurements taken by a fleet of 3,000 high-tech ocean buoys first deployed in 2003 — is toward cooling. As Dr. Josh Willis, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted in a separate interview with National Public Radio, "there has been a very slight cooling" over the buoys' five years of observation. As Joseph D'Aleo, the Weather Channel's first director of meteorology, told National Review Online's Deroy Murdock that the slight warming trend "peaked in 1998, and the temperature trend the last decade has been flat, even as CO2 has increased 5.5%. Cooling began in 2002." He added: "Ocean buoys have echoed that slight cooling since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deployed them in 2003." In fact, Ryan Maue of Florida State University's Center for Ocean-Atmosphere Prediction Studies says 2007 "will rank as a historically inactive tropical cyclone year for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole." In the past 30 years, Maue adds, only 1977 had less hurricane activity from January through October. Last September had the lowest activity since 1977 while the Octobers of 2006 and 2007 had the lowest activity since 1976 and 1977, respectively. So why the hype? Well, global warming is a growth industry designed to keep Earth and some bank accounts green. Gore himself joined the venture capital group, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers just last September. On May 1, the firm announced a $500 million investment in maturing green technology firms called the Green Growth Fund. The group announced another $700 million to be invested over the next three years in green-tech startup firms. But if the green technology business, uh, cools down, there will be no return on that investment. There would be no need for such investments if global warming wasn't a threat. So Gore just launched, among other things, a $300 million on an ad campaign to convince us it is so. We have a prediction all our own — that disastrous global warming will not occur. Then the greenies will take credit for preventing it and ask us if we're glad we spent trillions in fighting it. Al Gore will be laughing all the way to the bank....
A Call for Criminal Inquiry on Mine Collapse The general manager and possibly other senior staff members at the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington, Utah, where nine miners died last August, withheld information from federal officials that could have prevented the disaster and should face a criminal inquiry, the chairman of a Congressional investigation said Thursday. The chairman, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, accused the company of concealing the extent of an earlier collapse in the mine that involved the same high-risk technique, retreat mining, that was being used when the disaster began. Mr. Miller said that if federal mine officials had known the extent of that earlier collapse, they would not have allowed the company to continue using the method, in which miners remove coal from the pillars that hold up the tunnels. Mr. Miller disclosed that he had sent a referral letter late last month to the Department of Justice asking it to investigate whether the mine’s manager, Laine W. Adair, on his own or in conspiracy with others in the company, concealed facts or made false statements to federal investigators about the condition of the mine before the disaster....
Warrant issued in deaths of 32 bison Authorities charged Thursday that an Austin, Texas, businessman, frustrated because a neighbor's bison were wandering onto his land near Hartsel, first threatened and then organized a hunt that led to 32 bison deaths. According to an arrest warrant, Jeffrey Scott Hawn wrote a letter to the hunters — members of the Aztlan Native Community of Gardner — on Feb. 25 telling them that he wanted them to "get started as quickly as possible." "You may hunt or remove them or you may remove them live and take them to the location of your choice," Hawn wrote. The 32 bison found dead in March belonged to longtime South Park rancher Monte Downare. Hawn owns a ranch near, but not adjacent to, the Downare ranch, according to officials. The warrant said Hawn is wanted on one count of felony theft, one count of felony criminal mischief and 32 counts of aggravated cruelty to animals, a Class 6 felony....
These broken fences will take a long time to mend It was, in the end, a contract killing, a contract massacre. And the Texas CEO who is alleged to have hired out the hit, it turns out, apparently tired of doing the job himself. The affidavit seeking the arrest of Austin corporate leader Jeff Hawn and signed on Thursday by Park County District Court Judge Stephen A. Groome reads like something out of an Old West novel - a feud between two large-spread ranchers that ends with one rounding up a posse to settle things in a fury of gunshots, blood and death. The dead, in this case, are 32 head of Fairplay rancher Monte Downare's prize bison, which his neighbor, Jeff Hawn, is now alleged to have shot and killed, or hired others to kill over several weeks dating back to late February. Jeff Hawn, who purchased his 362-acre ranch abutting Monte Downare's spread in 1995, is charged with a single felony count of theft, a single count of criminal mischief and 32 felony counts of aggravated cruelty to animals. The story of the feud is long, one that culminated last February when Jeff Hawn allegedly reached his fill of Monte Downare's bison jumping or otherwise destroying his fences to graze on his property. What follows is culled directly from the arrest affidavit....
McCain Pushed Land Swap That Benefits Backer Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers. Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks. When McCain's legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Ariz., run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal. The Audubon Society described the exchange as the largest in Arizona history. The swap involved more than 55,000 acres of land in all, including rare expanses of desert woodland and pronghorn antelope habitat. The deal had support from many local officials and the Arizona Republic newspaper for its expansion of the Prescott National Forest. But it brought an outcry from some Arizona environmentalists when it was proposed in 2002, partly because it went through Congress rather than a process that allowed more citizen input....
Questions Submitted to the McCain Campaign Wednesday Answers are from Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign. 1. What led Sen. McCain to submit the legislation for the Yavapai Ranch Land Exchange in 2003? RESPONSE: At the request of the U.S. Forest Service, as well as many Northern Arizona communities, Senator McCain agreed to introduce the proposal to consolidate the largest remaining checkerboard ownership in the state to improve the management of forest lands and conservation of natural resources. The legislation also provided communities with an opportunity to acquire land needed for economic development, community services, and open space. And, perhaps most importantly to Senator McCain, in direct response to concerns raised by local communities, the final measure included requirements for responsible water use in the affected communities, which set an important precedent for the entire state. 2. Dr. Ruskin hired as lobbyists several former staff members and advisers to Sen. McCain. In what way did they influence Sen. McCain's thinking about the land exchange proposal?....
Real-Estate Drop Has a Green Lining There's a green lining to the real-estate cloud: Developers are dropping plans to build on some choice pieces of land and instead are selling it for such uses as public parks and nature preserves. One of the big beneficiaries is Trust for Public Land, a San Francisco nonprofit group that specializes in buying land for conservation. The Trust often struggled during property-boom years to find sellers among land owners near urban centers. Now, U.S. property owners from Massachusetts to Hawaii are flocking to it. One of the latest examples involves a five-mile stretch of Hawaiian beach. Last summer, a unit of Los Angeles-based Oaktree Capital Management LP was negotiating with a hotel chain to build a mega-resort development along Oahu's fabled North Shore. Its plan for as many as five new hotels with up to 3,500 rooms and condominium units had been one of the most intensely opposed in Hawaii in years. The Trust's financial muscle to make acquisitions is growing. Its planned budget for this year is $102 million, up from $90 million last year. With the real-estate slump, "We're trying to make lemonade out of lemons," says Will Rogers, president of the Trust. In addition to the Trust, the Nature Conservancy, Arlington, Va., is among the national groups working on similar deals. Their purchases tend to be larger -- involving thousands of acres. "Two to three years ago, local farmers and ranchers were eager to sell off their land and cash out," says the Nature Conservancy's Cristina Mestre. "Now, we're being approached en masse" to buy development rights....
Kids go into the wild Dude, just look at this. How cool is this?" Cameron Renteria, 9, is buzzing with excitement over a patch of sandy earth. It's shaded by a twisting juniper and ringed by rocks. It has just enough room for him and two friends to cram onto, unpack their peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, and chatter with bravado about what they'll do if they encounter mountain lions and rattlesnakes. These boys and many of the 950 other schoolchildren who were bused up the monument recently to take part in Junior Ranger Day have had few, if any, opportunities to explore wild places. To them, nature is a little scary, quite foreign, but a very cool novelty. A term has been coined for the outdoors disconnect suffered by such children: nature-deficit disorder. The phenomenon is epidemic in a generation that spends more time indoors than out and is more familiar with YouTube and "Guitar Hero" than with tadpoles and pine cones. Getting children outdoors has become a national mission. There is now a Take Your Child to Nature Day. Congress is considering A No Child Left Inside Act that would make federal funds available for environmental education. The U.S. Forest Service has started a More Kids in the Woods initiative. A coalition called the Children & Nature Network has grown to more than 40 chapters that advocate for outdoor play and programs across the country. "I think this has finally reached a point in our general consciousness," said Mark DeGregorio, education program manager at Rocky Mountain National Park....
Bear mauling wasn't Utah's fault, state official says Last summer's fatal mauling of 11-year-old Samuel Ives by a black bear was a tragedy, but Utah officials believe the blame lies with the boy's parents and the federal government, not with the state. "It's not the state's fault," assistant Utah attorney general Reed Stringham told the Deseret News. "I hope that's the message that's been conveyed throughout this. It's a tragedy, but that doesn't mean the state is responsible." Rebecca Ives and Samuel's natural father, Kevan Francis, filed lawsuits in 4th District Court and U.S. District Court in March, arguing that the state and federal governments failed to warn campers that a bear had harassed campers in the same area a day before. Had they known that, they never would have camped there and their son would still be alive, they say. The state recently filed a response to the complaint in 4th District Court, stating that because of the Utah Governmental Immunity Act, the state is protected against this prosecution. The state argues that blame should be pinned on the United States of America and the USDA Forest Service, plus Ives and Mulvey....
U.S. man jailed for 20 years for eco-bombing plot A California man described by prosecutors as an "eco-terrorist" was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison on Thursday for plotting to blow up a federal forestry site, telephone towers and other targets. Eric McDavid, 29, was convicted by a federal jury in March after two co-conspirators, Zachary Jenson and Lauren Weiner, pleaded guilty and cooperated with the government. Weiner is due to be sentenced on May 15 and Jenson on August 7. McDavid's sentence of 235 months in a federal prison "should serve as a cautionary tale to those who would conspire to commit life-threatening acts in the name of their extremist views," U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said in a statement issued in Sacramento, California. Federal prosecutors said the three defendants planned to attack targets including the U.S. Forest Service Institute of Forest Genetics, the Nimbus Dam and Fish Hatchery, cellular telephone towers and electric power stations....
Timber payments in Iraq spending bill U.S. Senator Ron Wyden announced today that $400 million is included in the Senate's Iraq supplemental spending bill for the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act, commonly known as the timber payments law. The bill, which includes all of the government's emergency supplemental funding for FY 2008, is expected to pass the Senate Appropriations Committee next Thursday, May 15. Once the Senate passes the Supplemental Appropriations bill it will need to be reconciled with the House of Representative's version, which is still under negotiation. It is no sure bet. Some version of the timber payments have been included in and then axed from bills several times during the past six months. Still, Wyden was optimistic something would pass both chamber of the federal legislature. "This funding could not come sooner for Oregon's rural schools and communities," said Wyden....
Air pollution in Wyo. community rivals that of big cities There isn't anything metropolitan about this tiny unincorporated town in southwest Wyoming, where a few single-family homes and a volunteer fire station stand against a skyline of snowcapped mountains. But Boulder, with a population of just 75 people, has one thing in common with major metropolitan areas: air pollution thick enough to pose health risks. "Used to be you could see horizon to horizon, crystal clear. Now you got this," said Craig Jensen as he gestured to a pale blue sky that he says is not as deeply colored as it used to be. "Makes you wonder what it's going to do to the grass, the trees and the birds." The pollution, largely from the region's booming natural gas industry, came in the form of ground-level ozone, which has exceeded healthy levels 11 times since January and caused Wyoming to issue its first ozone alerts. Now the ozone threatens to cost the industry and taxpayers millions of dollars to stay within federal clean-air laws....
Couple told to move off land or pay feds to stay Two residents of a scenic acre of mining claim-turned- pricey real estate down valley from Telluride have fought for more than a quarter of a century to clear up disputes over ownership of the land. But federal land managers have finally determined that they are trespassers and must go — or pay dearly to stay. "We are just flabbergasted," said Sally Siegel, a preschool teacher in Telluride. "To a rational person, this decision the BLM has come to makes no sense." Siegel and husband David Mattner have been living in a modest cabin up Fall Creek Road since the 1980s — before multimillion-dollar homes started popping up in the heavily wooded area. Siegel and Mattner entered into a rent-to-own contract with a previous owner before the property became theirs, for $40,600, in 1993. But that "owner" and a string of "owners" going back to 1954 never had a legal right to the property, according to the Bureau of Land Management. To soften the impact on Siegel and Mattner, a carpenter, the BLM is offering them a three-year permit to stay in their home while they work on finding land of equal value that they could swap with the BLM or to enter into a fair-market lifetime lease, along with back rent for the past 25 years....
Man who killed eagle loses ruling A member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe who killed a bald eagle for use in his tribe's Sun Dance in 2005 must stand trial, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. A panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver reversed a 2006 decision by U.S. District Judge William Downes of Wyoming that had dismissed a criminal charge against Winslow Friday of Ethete. In dismissing the charge, Downes had ruled that the federal government does no more than pay lip service to American Indian religious practices. Downes said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service generally refuses to grant permits allowing tribal members to kill eagles, even though federal regulations say such permits should be available. But the appeals court ruled that American Indians' religious freedoms are not violated by federal law protecting eagles or its policy requiring American Indians to get permits to kill eagles....
Judge sets hearing on wolf injunction A federal judge in Montana has rejected a request by the government to delay a lawsuit seeking to place the gray wolf back on the endangered-species list, saying that he's "unwilling to risk more deaths." At least 39 of the Northern Rockies' 1,500 gray wolves have been killed since they lost federal protection in March. That action placed wolves under the authority of state wildlife agencies in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. The three states have relaxed rules for killings wolves that harass or harm livestock. The states are also planning public hunts later this year - the first in decades. Environmental and animal rights groups sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week, claiming that the loss of federal protection threatens the wolf's successful recovery. They also asked for a court injunction to restore federal control over wolves while the case is pending....
FWP OKs removal of 2 wolves Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has authorized the removal of two wolves from private land near the Middle Fork of the Dearborn River, west of Bowmans Corner. The two are in addition to three removed from the same pack last year. Wednesday night, officials confirmed a cow had been killed by wolves along the Rocky Mountain Front, and FWP authorized federal Wildlife Services to remove the radio-collared alpha male and one yearling from the Monitor Mountain pack. Late last year, Wildlife Services removed three wolves from the pack following a series of livestock incidents. As part of an incremental response, one wolf was killed on Dec. 8 and two wolves were killed on Dec. 10. This time, because the pack may have denned and have produced a litter, officials will try to protect the radio-collared alpha female and pups. There are also several yearlings with the pack....
Negotiators Agree on Farm Bill, but Bush Vows to Veto It House and Senate negotiators yesterday reached final agreement on a new farm bill that will spend close to $300 billion on nutrition, conservation, energy and farm subsidy programs over the next five years, but administration officials immediately announced that President Bush will veto it. "This bill increases subsidies to farmers at a time of record farm income," Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said. The negotiators "have done a disservice to taxpayers." The speedy reaction from the executive branch put the spotlight on congressional Republicans, many of whom support the legislation and might be hard-pressed to vote to uphold a veto in an election year. The package, the product of weeks of closed-door bargaining, is stuffed with plums for key constituencies. Dairy farmers will get as much as $410 million more over 10 years to cover higher feed costs, and negotiators tucked in an annual authorization of $15 million to help "geographically disadvantaged farmers" in Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa and Puerto Rico. The bill assures growers of basic crops such as wheat, cotton, corn and soybeans $5 billion a year in automatic payments, even if farm and food prices stay at record levels....
South Korean internet geeks trigger panic over US 'tainted beef' imports Tens of thousands of young internet-obsessed South Koreans, whipped into a frenzy by alarmist television programmes, a complex scientific paper on genetics and a hyperactive online rumour-mill, have held candlelit vigils protesting against imports of American beef. Believing that the meat carries a high risk of BSE and that Koreans are genetically predisposed to contracting the linked Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the online masses have taken to the streets, cursing America and demanding that their Government should act to avert catastrophe. Two features of the protests have caught the authorities, the Government and teachers offguard. The first is that, unlike the mobs that have contributed to South Korea's long history of street rallies, more than half of the demonstrators are below university age....
China eyes overseas land in food push Chinese companies will be encouraged to buy farmland abroad, particularly in Africa and South America, to help guarantee food security under a plan being considered by Beijing. A proposal drafted by the Ministry of Agriculture would make supporting offshore land acquisition by domestic agricultural companies a central government policy. Beijing already has similar policies to boost offshore investment by state-owned banks, manufacturers and oil companies, but offshore agricultural investment has so far been limited to a few small projects. If approved, the plan could face intense opposition abroad given surging global food prices and deforestation fears. However an official close to the deliberations said it was likely to be adopted. “There should be no problem for this policy to be approved. The problem might come from foreign governments who are unwilling to give up large areas of land,” the official said. The move comes as oil-rich but food-poor countries in the Middle East and north Africa explore similar options. Libya is talking with Ukraine about growing wheat in the former Soviet republic, while Saudi Arabia has said it would invest in agricultural and livestock projects abroad to ensure food security and control commodity prices....
Global free market for food and energy faces biggest threat in decades The global free market for food and energy is facing its biggest threat in decades as a host of countries push through draconian measures to hold down prices, raising fears of a new "resource nationalism" that could endanger world food security. India shocked the markets yesterday by suspending trading in futures contracts for a range of farm products in a bid to clamp down on alleged speculators and curb inflation, now running at 7.6pc. The move has been seen as a concession to India's Communist MPs - key allies of premier Manmohan Singh - who want a full-fledged ban on futures trading in sugar, cooking oil, and grains. As food and fuel riots spread across the world, a string of governments have resorted to steps that menace the free flow of food and key commodities. Argentina has banned beef exports, while Egypt and India have stopped shipments of rice....
Friday, May 09, 2008
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Hikers packing concealed heat East Brainerd resident Monica Dobbs hikes 100 miles of the Appalachian Trail every winter with friends and craves the quiet days without cell phones, television and work. Hikers who want to leave their daily lives behind sleep next to strangers in shelters, and many trade their real names for trail names. They sometimes can walk two or three days to find a town or a phone. While leaving society behind is refreshing, being alone in the woods also can be terrifying. “It’s an invitation for a disaster,” said Ms. Dobbs, a 28-year-old hairdresser, who plans to take a 9 mm handgun with her on her next trek. “I think you should be allowed to legally carry a weapon for defense purposes. If someone comes after me, what am I going to do?” she said. Guns have been restricted from some national parks for more than 100 years, except for hunting areas. However, there is a growing interest in easing the restrictions. U.S. Department of the Interior officials have proposed bringing federal gun restrictions in line with state laws. If approved, the change would allow hikers to carry loaded concealed weapons in some national parks. Though crime in America’s national parks has decreased in the last 10 years, 384 incidents including killings, rapes, robberies, kidnappings and aggravated assaults occurred in national parks in 2006, according to the National Park Service....
Senate committee approves buyout of cattle ranchers A Senate committee Wednesday unanimously approved a delicate agreement that would close 24,000 acres in Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument to grazing while paying ranchers to keep their cattle off the land. The action by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee moves closer to reality a novel proposal that has been years in the making. The bill, which was sponsored by Oregon Sens. Gordon Smith and Ron Wyden, would provide federal protection to the property. In return, ranchers would be paid for releasing their grazing rights by a fund established by environmental and private groups. But not everyone was happy with the plan. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., said he would introduce legislation in the next week to add federal payments to ranchers who give up their grazing rights. The original agreement called for federal money, but it was removed during Senate consideration. Walden called it a "bait and switch" that shortchanges ranchers who are walking away from a valuable asset. "In Washington, D.C., I've learned that you better get it in writing," Walden said in a statement less than an hour after the deal was approved in the Senate. "I've found out the hard way that if you don't have a guarantee in writing, it likely won't happen. By including a guarantee for full compensation, we will ensure that the wilderness and the buyouts reach the finish line at the same time...Rancher Bob Miller, who helped negotiate the settlement on behalf of himself and four others, said he was pleased with the Smith-Wyden bill even though it offered far less money than ranchers originally sought. Miller said the Senate bill cut the payout to ranchers by roughly 60 percent from the amount they originally sought. The federal payment was deleted at the insistence of committee chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who worried about setting a precedent if federal money was used. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., also objected, arguing that using federal money to buy grazing rights could lead to a wholesale buyback that would seal federal lands from grazing....
Senate panel approves Idaho wilderness bill A bill to create a wilderness in southwest Idaho's Owyhee canyonlands has cleared a Senate committee. The bill, introduced by Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, would create an 807-square-mile wilderness. It also would open 300 square miles of previously off-limit areas to motorized recreation, livestock grazing and other activities. The measure would provide ranchers with cash and federal land in exchange for giving up private land and grazing rights on some public land, and would offer federal protection to 316 miles of wild and scenic rivers in Owyhee County. Crapo says he will continue to seek the money needed to carry out the required agreements if the measure becomes law.
Public to comment on prairie dogs The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has begun accepting public comment on whether the white-tailed prairie dog, a squirrel-like rodent found in four states, should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. The agency is reconsidering its denial of that protection and will accept comment until July 7, according to a notice published Tuesday in the Federal Register. Last year, the agency announced it was reconsidering its decision after an investigation found a former Interior Department administrator had inappropriately influenced the denial. The Interior Department oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service. When the agency did not specify a timeline for reconsideration, conservation groups sued. In settling the lawsuit in February, the agency agreed to begin a status review this spring and make a decision by mid-2010. The white-tailed prairie dog is found in Wyoming, where the numbers are greatest, as well as in Colorado, Utah and a small slice of Montana....
Prairie dogs face new threat: bureaucrats Any society that can afford to fret about the fate of nature’s hairy answer to the cockroach — the prairie dog — has to be considered a mite confused. Not surprisingly, that society would be this one. Yes, the federal government has agreed to consider the possibility that the white-tailed prairie dog might be an endangered species. That would be the same prairie dog that you see haunched up in the desert, generally surrounded by fleas. Not being particularly bright, they also tend to become decorations on Desert Duelers and naturalistic murals on Michelins and Goodyears as they dash onto busy roadways to chomp down on the remains of their erstwhile townies. More frequently, they, or what’s left of them, end up as chow for hawks, eagles, coyotes, cougars, bobcats and so on. And, horror of horrors, prairie dogs also tend to spend some of their last moments in the cross hairs of telescopic sights of modern rifles wielded by human sharpshooters. The last activity, of course, is considered unacceptable by one subset of humanity that simply cannot stand the thought of another subset wandering unregulated about the public lands. Which brings us to the point at which we are now considering spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, on highly trained technocrats who will devote untold hours to counting prairie dogs in the sagebrush-, piñon- and juniper-studded high country of the Rocky Mountain West....
U.S. now clueless about sea lion deaths at dam Backing away from earlier suggestions that six sea lions were brazenly gunned down at Bonneville Dam over the weekend, federal fisheries officials said on Wednesday they now do not know how the animals died. They said they initially thought, based on puncture wounds on the neck of one animal and traces of blood, that the sea lions were illegally shot while trapped inside floating cages set up by state officials. Initial reports Sunday that the animals were shot provoked outrage, atop already rising controversy over the sea lions preying on protected salmon. State officials halted all sea lion capture efforts until next year. Examinations of the carcasses found no gunshot wounds and determined that the neck wounds were probably caused by bites from another sea lion. Officials said they do not know that foul play was involved. The gates on the floating cage platforms are typically left open, but state officials acknowledged Wednesday that in a few past instances the gates have accidentally closed on their own....
How many wolves? Lawsuit says original target was too small by sevenfold With more than 1,500 wolves now roaming the Northern Rockies, there are five times the original goal stated in the federal government's 1994 wolf recovery plan. But a coalition of conservation and animal rights groups is trying to convince a federal judge that 1,500 wolves is not enough -- that the animals should be put back on the federal endangered species list until the population grows by at least another 33 percent, and state management plans are put in place to maintain that level. This is one of the central arguments put forth by the coalition of 12 conservation and animal rights organizations in a lawsuit filed April 28 in U.S. District Court in Montana. The coalition is attempting to overturn the federal government's decision to delist wolves in the Northern Rockies, and is seeking a court injunction to halt state management of wolves while the case is pending. Sylvia Fallon, a geneticist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said scientific knowledge has grown significantly in the past 20 years. Geneticists now understand that there should be 2,000 to 5,000 wolves in the Northern Rockies before the federal government can, in good faith, call the species "recovered" here. Also, she said, it appears that the three main subgroups of wolves in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana have remained genetically isolated from one another, and interbreeding between the groups will be essential to long-term viability....
Piñon move arouses new suspicions The U.S. Army announced Wednesday that it plans to study the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of stationing a new infantry brigade combat team at Fort Carson. But critics viewed the announcement as a conflicting Pentagon doctrine to justify expanding the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in southern Colorado. "I think the average citizen would like a straight answer without the Pentagon bringing stealth technology into play," said Jim Herrell, board member of the expansion opposition group Not 1 More Acre. The Notice of Intent to begin an environmental-impact statement process comes two weeks after the opposition group sued the U.S. Army for failing to mention its plans to expand acreage of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in a previous environmental- impact statement. The Army first proposed to expand the 368-square-mile site to nearly 1,000 square miles in 2006. In December, Congress passed a bill prohibiting the Army from spending any money on acquiring acreage for the site in fiscal year 2008. Joe Brettell, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, said the Army is using leftover funds from fiscal year 2007 for actions at Fort Carson and the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site related to its "Grow the Forces" agenda. "They claim all reports made come from funds from fiscal year 2007," Brettell said. "Technically, the Army is not in violation of the moratorium."....
More than $11.5M awarded to Florida residents in citrus case Florida owes more than $11.5 million to thousands of Broward County homeowners whose citrus trees were chopped down during a failed effort to control a harmful disease, a jury ruled. The amount was far less than the plaintiffs had sought, leading attorneys for the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to declare partial victory. Jurors reached the verdict Tuesday in the class-action lawsuit after deliberating for almost two days. If the state appeals, it could be months before the more than 58,000 Broward County residents involved in the case are paid. The homeowners filed the lawsuit after the state cut down about 133,700 citrus trees in Florida's second-most populous county as it tried to stop the spread of canker, then offered payments ranging from $55 and $100 for each tree - enough for small replacement saplings. The residents' lawyer, Robert Gilbert, estimated the destroyed trees were worth $350 to $400 apiece, or a maximum of about $50 million. He said it would take time to determine how much each homeowner might receive under the verdict, though he will likely appeal the compensation amount....
Billings area inventor makes horse riding safer If you're ever ridden a horse you probably know that accidents can happen. Well about twenty years ago, a local rancher set out to find a way to prevent some of those accidents. His goal was to stop riders from getting a foot caught in a stirrup and being drug to death by the horse. Today his invention is saving lives all around the country. "The first time your body is hung up you can go right into the hind legs of a horse and that's a natural response for that horse to buck and kick and try and get away," says breakaway stirrup inventor Mike McCoy. In all his years of riding McCoy, a local rancher, was only drug by a horse once. But after hearing hundreds of stories of others who weren't so lucky, Mike McCoy had an idea. "Any time your toe is wedged in a stirrup or your foot is all the way through it, before you're drug, that stirrup always rotates 90 degrees about that stirrup leather and at 44 degrees rotation we have a mechanism designed to release." The small devise has 29 different parts. McCoy says, "There is more in this little mechanism than there is in most pistols or rifles". A lot of people thought the stirrup would release at random but Mike designed the stirrups to specifically release in emergency situations only....
Senate committee approves buyout of cattle ranchers A Senate committee Wednesday unanimously approved a delicate agreement that would close 24,000 acres in Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument to grazing while paying ranchers to keep their cattle off the land. The action by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee moves closer to reality a novel proposal that has been years in the making. The bill, which was sponsored by Oregon Sens. Gordon Smith and Ron Wyden, would provide federal protection to the property. In return, ranchers would be paid for releasing their grazing rights by a fund established by environmental and private groups. But not everyone was happy with the plan. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., said he would introduce legislation in the next week to add federal payments to ranchers who give up their grazing rights. The original agreement called for federal money, but it was removed during Senate consideration. Walden called it a "bait and switch" that shortchanges ranchers who are walking away from a valuable asset. "In Washington, D.C., I've learned that you better get it in writing," Walden said in a statement less than an hour after the deal was approved in the Senate. "I've found out the hard way that if you don't have a guarantee in writing, it likely won't happen. By including a guarantee for full compensation, we will ensure that the wilderness and the buyouts reach the finish line at the same time...Rancher Bob Miller, who helped negotiate the settlement on behalf of himself and four others, said he was pleased with the Smith-Wyden bill even though it offered far less money than ranchers originally sought. Miller said the Senate bill cut the payout to ranchers by roughly 60 percent from the amount they originally sought. The federal payment was deleted at the insistence of committee chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who worried about setting a precedent if federal money was used. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., also objected, arguing that using federal money to buy grazing rights could lead to a wholesale buyback that would seal federal lands from grazing....
Senate panel approves Idaho wilderness bill A bill to create a wilderness in southwest Idaho's Owyhee canyonlands has cleared a Senate committee. The bill, introduced by Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, would create an 807-square-mile wilderness. It also would open 300 square miles of previously off-limit areas to motorized recreation, livestock grazing and other activities. The measure would provide ranchers with cash and federal land in exchange for giving up private land and grazing rights on some public land, and would offer federal protection to 316 miles of wild and scenic rivers in Owyhee County. Crapo says he will continue to seek the money needed to carry out the required agreements if the measure becomes law.
Public to comment on prairie dogs The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has begun accepting public comment on whether the white-tailed prairie dog, a squirrel-like rodent found in four states, should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. The agency is reconsidering its denial of that protection and will accept comment until July 7, according to a notice published Tuesday in the Federal Register. Last year, the agency announced it was reconsidering its decision after an investigation found a former Interior Department administrator had inappropriately influenced the denial. The Interior Department oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service. When the agency did not specify a timeline for reconsideration, conservation groups sued. In settling the lawsuit in February, the agency agreed to begin a status review this spring and make a decision by mid-2010. The white-tailed prairie dog is found in Wyoming, where the numbers are greatest, as well as in Colorado, Utah and a small slice of Montana....
Prairie dogs face new threat: bureaucrats Any society that can afford to fret about the fate of nature’s hairy answer to the cockroach — the prairie dog — has to be considered a mite confused. Not surprisingly, that society would be this one. Yes, the federal government has agreed to consider the possibility that the white-tailed prairie dog might be an endangered species. That would be the same prairie dog that you see haunched up in the desert, generally surrounded by fleas. Not being particularly bright, they also tend to become decorations on Desert Duelers and naturalistic murals on Michelins and Goodyears as they dash onto busy roadways to chomp down on the remains of their erstwhile townies. More frequently, they, or what’s left of them, end up as chow for hawks, eagles, coyotes, cougars, bobcats and so on. And, horror of horrors, prairie dogs also tend to spend some of their last moments in the cross hairs of telescopic sights of modern rifles wielded by human sharpshooters. The last activity, of course, is considered unacceptable by one subset of humanity that simply cannot stand the thought of another subset wandering unregulated about the public lands. Which brings us to the point at which we are now considering spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, on highly trained technocrats who will devote untold hours to counting prairie dogs in the sagebrush-, piñon- and juniper-studded high country of the Rocky Mountain West....
U.S. now clueless about sea lion deaths at dam Backing away from earlier suggestions that six sea lions were brazenly gunned down at Bonneville Dam over the weekend, federal fisheries officials said on Wednesday they now do not know how the animals died. They said they initially thought, based on puncture wounds on the neck of one animal and traces of blood, that the sea lions were illegally shot while trapped inside floating cages set up by state officials. Initial reports Sunday that the animals were shot provoked outrage, atop already rising controversy over the sea lions preying on protected salmon. State officials halted all sea lion capture efforts until next year. Examinations of the carcasses found no gunshot wounds and determined that the neck wounds were probably caused by bites from another sea lion. Officials said they do not know that foul play was involved. The gates on the floating cage platforms are typically left open, but state officials acknowledged Wednesday that in a few past instances the gates have accidentally closed on their own....
How many wolves? Lawsuit says original target was too small by sevenfold With more than 1,500 wolves now roaming the Northern Rockies, there are five times the original goal stated in the federal government's 1994 wolf recovery plan. But a coalition of conservation and animal rights groups is trying to convince a federal judge that 1,500 wolves is not enough -- that the animals should be put back on the federal endangered species list until the population grows by at least another 33 percent, and state management plans are put in place to maintain that level. This is one of the central arguments put forth by the coalition of 12 conservation and animal rights organizations in a lawsuit filed April 28 in U.S. District Court in Montana. The coalition is attempting to overturn the federal government's decision to delist wolves in the Northern Rockies, and is seeking a court injunction to halt state management of wolves while the case is pending. Sylvia Fallon, a geneticist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said scientific knowledge has grown significantly in the past 20 years. Geneticists now understand that there should be 2,000 to 5,000 wolves in the Northern Rockies before the federal government can, in good faith, call the species "recovered" here. Also, she said, it appears that the three main subgroups of wolves in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana have remained genetically isolated from one another, and interbreeding between the groups will be essential to long-term viability....
Piñon move arouses new suspicions The U.S. Army announced Wednesday that it plans to study the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of stationing a new infantry brigade combat team at Fort Carson. But critics viewed the announcement as a conflicting Pentagon doctrine to justify expanding the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in southern Colorado. "I think the average citizen would like a straight answer without the Pentagon bringing stealth technology into play," said Jim Herrell, board member of the expansion opposition group Not 1 More Acre. The Notice of Intent to begin an environmental-impact statement process comes two weeks after the opposition group sued the U.S. Army for failing to mention its plans to expand acreage of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in a previous environmental- impact statement. The Army first proposed to expand the 368-square-mile site to nearly 1,000 square miles in 2006. In December, Congress passed a bill prohibiting the Army from spending any money on acquiring acreage for the site in fiscal year 2008. Joe Brettell, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, said the Army is using leftover funds from fiscal year 2007 for actions at Fort Carson and the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site related to its "Grow the Forces" agenda. "They claim all reports made come from funds from fiscal year 2007," Brettell said. "Technically, the Army is not in violation of the moratorium."....
More than $11.5M awarded to Florida residents in citrus case Florida owes more than $11.5 million to thousands of Broward County homeowners whose citrus trees were chopped down during a failed effort to control a harmful disease, a jury ruled. The amount was far less than the plaintiffs had sought, leading attorneys for the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to declare partial victory. Jurors reached the verdict Tuesday in the class-action lawsuit after deliberating for almost two days. If the state appeals, it could be months before the more than 58,000 Broward County residents involved in the case are paid. The homeowners filed the lawsuit after the state cut down about 133,700 citrus trees in Florida's second-most populous county as it tried to stop the spread of canker, then offered payments ranging from $55 and $100 for each tree - enough for small replacement saplings. The residents' lawyer, Robert Gilbert, estimated the destroyed trees were worth $350 to $400 apiece, or a maximum of about $50 million. He said it would take time to determine how much each homeowner might receive under the verdict, though he will likely appeal the compensation amount....
Billings area inventor makes horse riding safer If you're ever ridden a horse you probably know that accidents can happen. Well about twenty years ago, a local rancher set out to find a way to prevent some of those accidents. His goal was to stop riders from getting a foot caught in a stirrup and being drug to death by the horse. Today his invention is saving lives all around the country. "The first time your body is hung up you can go right into the hind legs of a horse and that's a natural response for that horse to buck and kick and try and get away," says breakaway stirrup inventor Mike McCoy. In all his years of riding McCoy, a local rancher, was only drug by a horse once. But after hearing hundreds of stories of others who weren't so lucky, Mike McCoy had an idea. "Any time your toe is wedged in a stirrup or your foot is all the way through it, before you're drug, that stirrup always rotates 90 degrees about that stirrup leather and at 44 degrees rotation we have a mechanism designed to release." The small devise has 29 different parts. McCoy says, "There is more in this little mechanism than there is in most pistols or rifles". A lot of people thought the stirrup would release at random but Mike designed the stirrups to specifically release in emergency situations only....
Environmentalists Still Can't Get It Right Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions they would prefer we forget. At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed." In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, former Vice President Al Gore's hero and mentor, predicted that there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning that the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50% of the world's resources and "by 2000 they (Americans) will, if permitted, be using all of them." In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000." Harvard biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look magazine, that by 1995 "somewhere between 75% and 85% of all the species of living animals will be extinct."....
Testing The Waters When the United Nations World Meteorological Organization recently reported that global temperatures had not risen since 1998, the explanation given by WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud was that the cool spell was the effect of the Pacific Ocean's La Nina current, "part of what we call 'variability.'" Well, oops, the Earth will do it again. According to a report by German researchers published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, shifting Atlantic ocean currents will cool parts of North America and Europe over the next decade as well. Noel Keenlyside of the Leibnitz Institute of Marine Science at Germany's Kiel University says "in the short term, you can see changes in the global mean temperature that you might not expect given the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change." The key to the Kiel team's prediction is the natural cycle of ocean currents called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO for those who aren't oceanographers or don't play Scrabble. The AMO is closely related to the warm currents that bring heat from the tropics to the coasts of Europe and North America. The cycle is not well understood, but is believed to repeat every 60 to 70 years. According to the greenies, the Earth is supposed to warm continuously and disastrously without taking any rest breaks. Yet after taking actual data from the Labrador Sea where the Gulf Stream gives up its warmth before sinking and returning southward and projecting forward, the Kiel team says the Atlantic currents will keep rising temperatures in check around the world, much as the warming and cooling associated with El Nino and La Nina in the Pacific affect global temperatures. Howard Hayden, physics professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, has described the machinery of the computer models used by the IPCC and others to predict imminent and cataclysmic climate change as ones that take "garbage in" and spit "gospel out."....
Eye Of The Hurricane Colorado State University says it'll no longer promote the work of Dr. William Gray. Is it really a cost-cutting move or are CSU and eco-fascists trying to silence the godfather of hurricane forecasting? The university says its decision is based solely on the burdens of keeping up with media requests and inquiries about Gray's work that overwhelm a lone media staffer. It says the decision has nothing to do with the fact that Gray, professor emeritus of CSU's atmospheric department, has been an effective voice offering inconvenient truths debunking Al Gore's climate disaster theories. If these requests are too burdensome, we'd suggest CSU divert some funds from Frisbee 101, or whatever passes for higher learning these days, and hire another media staffer. We don't buy the excuse that inquiries relating to Gray detract from the promotion of others' work. The man is America's most reliable hurricane forecaster. If anyone's work should be promoted, it should be his. In a memo to colleagues after CSU officials informed him that media relations would no longer promote his forecasts after 2008, Gray wrote: "This is a flimsy excuse and seems to me to be a cover for the department's capitulation to the desires of some who want to rein in my global-warming criticisms." And critical he has been. At last year's National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, Gray called Gore a "gross alarmist." "He's one of those guys that preaches end-of-the-world type of things," Gray told AP. "I think he's doing a great disservice, and he doesn't know what he's talking about." Gray says fluctuations in hurricane intensity and frequency, exhibit A in Gore's inquisition, have nothing to do with carbon dioxide levels or human activity, but with natural variations in ocean currents....
Are We Running Out of Food? Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times, April 7 that there is a world food shortage, accompanied by skyrocketing prices. Because of this, poor people in Africa and other places are starving. Krugman's proposed solution to these problems is for us to give more of our money to government, so that it can solve the problem the market is apparently incapable of solving. And now, the real story: Regardless of whether one thinks the above-listed factors play a role in world food shortages, there are in fact two issues of primary importance related to food shortages and food costs that Krugman does not mention and may not know. First, the underlying cause of any shortage is the lack of a free market, since genuine shortages cannot appear in a free market. Instead, while prices of goods would likely rise at the onset of reduced supplies, the goods in question would always be available at some price — and the higher the price, the more the supply would increase to meet demand, which would then of course reduce the price. If we had free world markets, food would be exported from some countries, such as the United States and Europe, where food is plentiful, to countries where it is needed. This is because it would be profitable to ship goods to needy areas like Africa, where shortages were making prices rise. The fact that this is not currently happening can be a result only of government price controls (which prevent prices from rising in needy countries), trade restrictions, or some other government barrier that prevents people from getting what they need. The World Bank has cited a list of 21 countries that have price controls on basic staples. We all remember the stories of people in Ethiopia starving in the 1980s, when 3 million people went hungry. What was unreported was that there were 60 million people in Ethiopia at the same time who were unaffected by famine. The moving of food from one part of the country, where it was plentiful, to the other part, affected by drought, was prevented by fighting between the government and rebel groups near the area of the drought. Economic incentives were prohibited by the government's forced withholding of food shipments (so that rebel soldiers would not have access to supplies), by price controls, by the declaring of grain wholesaling illegal in much of the country, and by the prohibition of the private selling of farm produce or machinery. A similar situation occurred in Zimbabwe in the early 2000s. Indian economist Amartya Sen won a Nobel Prize for demonstrating that most famines are caused not by lack of food but by governments' ill-advised intrusions into the functioning of markets....
Testing The Waters When the United Nations World Meteorological Organization recently reported that global temperatures had not risen since 1998, the explanation given by WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud was that the cool spell was the effect of the Pacific Ocean's La Nina current, "part of what we call 'variability.'" Well, oops, the Earth will do it again. According to a report by German researchers published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, shifting Atlantic ocean currents will cool parts of North America and Europe over the next decade as well. Noel Keenlyside of the Leibnitz Institute of Marine Science at Germany's Kiel University says "in the short term, you can see changes in the global mean temperature that you might not expect given the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change." The key to the Kiel team's prediction is the natural cycle of ocean currents called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO for those who aren't oceanographers or don't play Scrabble. The AMO is closely related to the warm currents that bring heat from the tropics to the coasts of Europe and North America. The cycle is not well understood, but is believed to repeat every 60 to 70 years. According to the greenies, the Earth is supposed to warm continuously and disastrously without taking any rest breaks. Yet after taking actual data from the Labrador Sea where the Gulf Stream gives up its warmth before sinking and returning southward and projecting forward, the Kiel team says the Atlantic currents will keep rising temperatures in check around the world, much as the warming and cooling associated with El Nino and La Nina in the Pacific affect global temperatures. Howard Hayden, physics professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, has described the machinery of the computer models used by the IPCC and others to predict imminent and cataclysmic climate change as ones that take "garbage in" and spit "gospel out."....
Eye Of The Hurricane Colorado State University says it'll no longer promote the work of Dr. William Gray. Is it really a cost-cutting move or are CSU and eco-fascists trying to silence the godfather of hurricane forecasting? The university says its decision is based solely on the burdens of keeping up with media requests and inquiries about Gray's work that overwhelm a lone media staffer. It says the decision has nothing to do with the fact that Gray, professor emeritus of CSU's atmospheric department, has been an effective voice offering inconvenient truths debunking Al Gore's climate disaster theories. If these requests are too burdensome, we'd suggest CSU divert some funds from Frisbee 101, or whatever passes for higher learning these days, and hire another media staffer. We don't buy the excuse that inquiries relating to Gray detract from the promotion of others' work. The man is America's most reliable hurricane forecaster. If anyone's work should be promoted, it should be his. In a memo to colleagues after CSU officials informed him that media relations would no longer promote his forecasts after 2008, Gray wrote: "This is a flimsy excuse and seems to me to be a cover for the department's capitulation to the desires of some who want to rein in my global-warming criticisms." And critical he has been. At last year's National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, Gray called Gore a "gross alarmist." "He's one of those guys that preaches end-of-the-world type of things," Gray told AP. "I think he's doing a great disservice, and he doesn't know what he's talking about." Gray says fluctuations in hurricane intensity and frequency, exhibit A in Gore's inquisition, have nothing to do with carbon dioxide levels or human activity, but with natural variations in ocean currents....
Are We Running Out of Food? Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times, April 7 that there is a world food shortage, accompanied by skyrocketing prices. Because of this, poor people in Africa and other places are starving. Krugman's proposed solution to these problems is for us to give more of our money to government, so that it can solve the problem the market is apparently incapable of solving. And now, the real story: Regardless of whether one thinks the above-listed factors play a role in world food shortages, there are in fact two issues of primary importance related to food shortages and food costs that Krugman does not mention and may not know. First, the underlying cause of any shortage is the lack of a free market, since genuine shortages cannot appear in a free market. Instead, while prices of goods would likely rise at the onset of reduced supplies, the goods in question would always be available at some price — and the higher the price, the more the supply would increase to meet demand, which would then of course reduce the price. If we had free world markets, food would be exported from some countries, such as the United States and Europe, where food is plentiful, to countries where it is needed. This is because it would be profitable to ship goods to needy areas like Africa, where shortages were making prices rise. The fact that this is not currently happening can be a result only of government price controls (which prevent prices from rising in needy countries), trade restrictions, or some other government barrier that prevents people from getting what they need. The World Bank has cited a list of 21 countries that have price controls on basic staples. We all remember the stories of people in Ethiopia starving in the 1980s, when 3 million people went hungry. What was unreported was that there were 60 million people in Ethiopia at the same time who were unaffected by famine. The moving of food from one part of the country, where it was plentiful, to the other part, affected by drought, was prevented by fighting between the government and rebel groups near the area of the drought. Economic incentives were prohibited by the government's forced withholding of food shipments (so that rebel soldiers would not have access to supplies), by price controls, by the declaring of grain wholesaling illegal in much of the country, and by the prohibition of the private selling of farm produce or machinery. A similar situation occurred in Zimbabwe in the early 2000s. Indian economist Amartya Sen won a Nobel Prize for demonstrating that most famines are caused not by lack of food but by governments' ill-advised intrusions into the functioning of markets....
FLE
Federal Agents Raid Office of Special Counsel Nearly two dozen federal agents yesterday raided the Washington headquarters of the agency that protects government whistle-blowers, as part of an intensifying criminal investigation of its leader, who is fighting allegations of improper political bias and obstruction of justice. Agents fanned out yesterday morning in the agency's building on M Street, where they sequestered Office of Special Counsel chief Scott J. Bloch for questioning, served grand-jury subpoenas on 17 employees and shut down access to computer networks in a search lasting more than five hours. Bloch, who was nominated to his post by President Bush in 2003, is the principal official responsible for protecting federal employees from reprisals for complaints about waste and fraud. He also polices violations of Hatch Act prohibitions on political activities in federal offices. Bloch has long been a target of criticism, some of it by his agency's career officials, but the FBI's abrupt seizure of computers and records marked a substantial escalation of the executive branch's probe of his conduct. Retired FBI agents and former prosecutors called the raid an unusual, if not unprecedented, intrusion on the work of a federal agency....
FBI seizes Doan, Rice case files in raid of OSC chief's office About 20 FBI agents and administrative investigators executed search warrants Tuesday on the U.S. Office of Special Counsel in a daylong raid that appeared at least partly focused on finding information on the office's high-profile investigations into alleged illegal political activity by Bush administration officials. Arriving at the agency's M Street office in Washington before 11 a.m., the agents served grand jury subpoenas seeking testimony and records from 17 current and former agency employees before carrying out boxes of documents and computers around 5 p.m. But OSC employees said the grand jury subpoenas seek a wide range of information that goes beyond Bloch's deletion of computer files or treatment of agency employees. Investigators have demanded all files on OSC's investigation last year into allegations of improper political activity by Lurita Doan, the former head of the General Services Administration, who was forced to resign last week by the White House. In addition, investigators demanded documents related to OSC's investigation into allegations that Secretary of State Rice used federal resources to travel to campaign appearances supporting President Bush's re-election in 2004. Bloch's office closed the case, finding no violation by Rice....
Watchdogs prompt FBI to withdraw 'unconstitutional' National Security Letter The FBI has withdrawn an illegal National Security Letter seeking information from an online library and has lifted a gag order that until Wednesday prevented any discussion of the information request. Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation helped the Internet Archive push back against what they say was an overly broad and unlawful request for information on one of its users. The FBI issued its National Security Letter in November, but ACLU, EFF and Archive officials were precluded from discussing it with anyone because of a gag order they say was unconstitutional. After nearly five months of haggling, the FBI eventually withdrew its NSL, which requested personal information about at least one user of the Internet Archive. Founded in 1996, the archive is recognized as a library by the state of California, and its collections include billions of Web records, documents, music and movies. Because the FBI's NSL sought information about what the suspected users were accessing in the digital library, it violated a 2006 update to the NSL authority that prevented access of information about library patrons' activities such as what books they checked out, EFF and ACLU lawyers said. The ACLU is representing NSL recipients in two other cases, but lawyers noted that virtually none of the 200,000 letters issued by the FBI, CIA, Defense Department and other agencies between 2003 and 2006 ever were challenged in court. The few cases that have gone before a judge all have prompted the FBI to back down, ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said....
CCTV boom has failed to slash crime, say police Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe. The warning comes from the head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) at New Scotland Yard as the force launches a series of initiatives to try to boost conviction rates using CCTV evidence. Use of CCTV images for court evidence has so far been very poor, according to Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, the officer in charge of the Metropolitan police unit. "CCTV was originally seen as a preventative measure," Neville told the Security Document World Conference in London. "Billions of pounds has been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It's been an utter fiasco....
If you make up the crime, serve the time Last night's 60 Minutes carried the moving story of the growing number of people sent to prison during the reign of infamous Dallas tough-guy District Attorney Henry Wade who are now being proven innocent and released because of the efforts of the Innocence Project and current DA Craig Watkins. After ten or twenty or more years behind bars without reason, it's remarkable that so many of the wrongly accused have lived long enough to see the light of day again and enjoy at least a modicum of compensation ($50,000 for each year of incarceration, or $100,000 per year if sentenced to death). The immediate mechanism for the release of these falsely imprisoned Texans has largely been DNA but, in at least some cases, it seems that the original prosecutors deliberately withheld evidence that would have assisted the defense (the Dallas Morning News reports that about half of belated exonerations in the state, and three in Dallas County, involve withheld evidence). That's illegal, but it carries no penalty under law. DA Watkins wants the power to bring criminal charges against prosecutors who withhold evidence. I think that's appropriate. But what should the penalty be? Here's an idea: Any prosecutor who withholds exculpatory evidence in a trial, leading to the conviction and imprisonment of an innocent person, should have to serve as many years behind bars as that person did before being exonerated. There should be a minimum sentence, of course, so that any such misconduct carries serious prison time....
Federal Agents Raid Office of Special Counsel Nearly two dozen federal agents yesterday raided the Washington headquarters of the agency that protects government whistle-blowers, as part of an intensifying criminal investigation of its leader, who is fighting allegations of improper political bias and obstruction of justice. Agents fanned out yesterday morning in the agency's building on M Street, where they sequestered Office of Special Counsel chief Scott J. Bloch for questioning, served grand-jury subpoenas on 17 employees and shut down access to computer networks in a search lasting more than five hours. Bloch, who was nominated to his post by President Bush in 2003, is the principal official responsible for protecting federal employees from reprisals for complaints about waste and fraud. He also polices violations of Hatch Act prohibitions on political activities in federal offices. Bloch has long been a target of criticism, some of it by his agency's career officials, but the FBI's abrupt seizure of computers and records marked a substantial escalation of the executive branch's probe of his conduct. Retired FBI agents and former prosecutors called the raid an unusual, if not unprecedented, intrusion on the work of a federal agency....
FBI seizes Doan, Rice case files in raid of OSC chief's office About 20 FBI agents and administrative investigators executed search warrants Tuesday on the U.S. Office of Special Counsel in a daylong raid that appeared at least partly focused on finding information on the office's high-profile investigations into alleged illegal political activity by Bush administration officials. Arriving at the agency's M Street office in Washington before 11 a.m., the agents served grand jury subpoenas seeking testimony and records from 17 current and former agency employees before carrying out boxes of documents and computers around 5 p.m. But OSC employees said the grand jury subpoenas seek a wide range of information that goes beyond Bloch's deletion of computer files or treatment of agency employees. Investigators have demanded all files on OSC's investigation last year into allegations of improper political activity by Lurita Doan, the former head of the General Services Administration, who was forced to resign last week by the White House. In addition, investigators demanded documents related to OSC's investigation into allegations that Secretary of State Rice used federal resources to travel to campaign appearances supporting President Bush's re-election in 2004. Bloch's office closed the case, finding no violation by Rice....
Watchdogs prompt FBI to withdraw 'unconstitutional' National Security Letter The FBI has withdrawn an illegal National Security Letter seeking information from an online library and has lifted a gag order that until Wednesday prevented any discussion of the information request. Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation helped the Internet Archive push back against what they say was an overly broad and unlawful request for information on one of its users. The FBI issued its National Security Letter in November, but ACLU, EFF and Archive officials were precluded from discussing it with anyone because of a gag order they say was unconstitutional. After nearly five months of haggling, the FBI eventually withdrew its NSL, which requested personal information about at least one user of the Internet Archive. Founded in 1996, the archive is recognized as a library by the state of California, and its collections include billions of Web records, documents, music and movies. Because the FBI's NSL sought information about what the suspected users were accessing in the digital library, it violated a 2006 update to the NSL authority that prevented access of information about library patrons' activities such as what books they checked out, EFF and ACLU lawyers said. The ACLU is representing NSL recipients in two other cases, but lawyers noted that virtually none of the 200,000 letters issued by the FBI, CIA, Defense Department and other agencies between 2003 and 2006 ever were challenged in court. The few cases that have gone before a judge all have prompted the FBI to back down, ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said....
CCTV boom has failed to slash crime, say police Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe. The warning comes from the head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) at New Scotland Yard as the force launches a series of initiatives to try to boost conviction rates using CCTV evidence. Use of CCTV images for court evidence has so far been very poor, according to Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, the officer in charge of the Metropolitan police unit. "CCTV was originally seen as a preventative measure," Neville told the Security Document World Conference in London. "Billions of pounds has been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It's been an utter fiasco....
If you make up the crime, serve the time Last night's 60 Minutes carried the moving story of the growing number of people sent to prison during the reign of infamous Dallas tough-guy District Attorney Henry Wade who are now being proven innocent and released because of the efforts of the Innocence Project and current DA Craig Watkins. After ten or twenty or more years behind bars without reason, it's remarkable that so many of the wrongly accused have lived long enough to see the light of day again and enjoy at least a modicum of compensation ($50,000 for each year of incarceration, or $100,000 per year if sentenced to death). The immediate mechanism for the release of these falsely imprisoned Texans has largely been DNA but, in at least some cases, it seems that the original prosecutors deliberately withheld evidence that would have assisted the defense (the Dallas Morning News reports that about half of belated exonerations in the state, and three in Dallas County, involve withheld evidence). That's illegal, but it carries no penalty under law. DA Watkins wants the power to bring criminal charges against prosecutors who withhold evidence. I think that's appropriate. But what should the penalty be? Here's an idea: Any prosecutor who withholds exculpatory evidence in a trial, leading to the conviction and imprisonment of an innocent person, should have to serve as many years behind bars as that person did before being exonerated. There should be a minimum sentence, of course, so that any such misconduct carries serious prison time....
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a 'Consequence' of Global Warming Using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a strategy for many global warming activists, and it was just a matter of time before someone found a way to tie the recent Myanmar cyclone to global warming. Former Vice President Al Gore in an interview on NPR’s May 6 “Fresh Air” broadcast did just that. He was interviewed by “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross about the release of his book, “The Assault on Reason,” in paperback. “And as we’re talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated,” Gore said. “And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.” Gore claimed global warming is forcing ocean temperatures to rise, which is causing storms, including cyclones and hurricanes, to intensify....
Subsea storage may fix our CO2 problem Researchers are looking beneath the world's deep, cold waters for places to put the greenhouse gases that may be warming its atmosphere. A growing body of research predicts deep subsea rock formations may be ideal for carbon sequestration — the process of storing carbon dioxide emissions underground to keep them from entering the Earth's atmosphere and contributing to climate change. A number of researchers already are conducting projects to inject CO2 in onshore formations to see if large amounts of the greenhouse gas can be stored underground indefinitely. Daniel Schrag, a professor at Harvard University's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, says the high pressures and low temperatures found below the sea floor — 10,000 feet or more underwater — provide a nearly foolproof way to keep CO2 stored. In those conditions CO2 becomes a liquid more dense than water that will not rise up to the ocean floor....
Reservoir larger than Manhattan planned to help Everglades Around South Florida's vast sugar cane fields, where turtles grow to the size of basketballs and alligators own the marsh, the silence of the swamp is broken by the sound of rumbling trucks and explosions. The earth-moving equipment and high explosives are laying the foundation for a mammoth construction project: a reservoir bigger than Manhattan designed to revive the ecosystem of the once-famed River of Grass. More than a century after the first homes and farms took shape in the Everglades, decades of flood-control projects have left the region parched and near ecological collapse. Now crews are building what will be the world's largest aboveground manmade reservoir to restore some natural water flow to the wetlands. The reservoir, estimated to cost up to $800 million, is the largest and most expensive part of a sweeping state and federal restoration effort. Most man-made reservoirs are built in canyons or valleys and use a natural water source such as a river to fill in behind a dam. This one will stand on its own, contained within earth-and-concrete walls much like an aboveground swimming pool larger than many cities. Planners hope to eventually double its size....
BLM: Ranch likely to be drilled A local rancher’s bid to protect most of his largely undeveloped land south of Collbran from natural gas drilling likely has failed, according to the Bureau of Land Management. Protests filed with the federal agency have failed to persuade the BLM to remove a 2,060-acre subsurface parcel from an upcoming lease sale, according to agency spokesman Jim Sample. “Yes, it’s still in the sale,” Sample said Monday. “It wasn’t deferred.” The parcel, underneath the Parker Basin Ranch, south of Collbran along 58 Road, is one of 49 federal tracts, totaling 31,430 acres, up for auction Thursday at the BLM’s Lakewood office. Sample said there is a slight chance the parcel could be removed from the sale at the last minute. Robert Lapsley, owner of the Parker Basin Ranch, said he was disappointed to hear the BLM plans to open up part of his more than 3,300-acre ranch to natural gas development. “The areas that they are talking about drilling is a calving area for the local elk herd,” Lapsley said. “Personally I just think they could find something better (to develop).” Lapsley, a California-based developer who has been visiting the area his entire life, said he purchased the ranch in June and placed nearly all of the land in a conservation easement....
3 states head to court to keep control over wolves Three states are defending their ability to sustain a gray wolf population in the Northern Rockies, asking to be heard in a federal lawsuit that seeks to return the wolves to the endangered species list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to remove the gray wolf from the list in March, saying the species had recovered from near-extermination in the region. That transferred wolf management to Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, which are planning what would be the first public hunts in decades. The lawsuit filed last week by 12 environmental and animal rights groups seeks to block the hunts, but the three states that filed paperwork with the court Monday and Tuesday hope to fend off the litigation so the hunts can proceed. Officials from the states said Tuesday that they can be trusted to sustain wolves without federal oversight. The hunts, they said, are needed in part to control wolf packs that have been killing an increasing number of livestock....
Predator control looks a lot different on the ground The extremists who are on a mission to eliminate the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services would do well to spend time with ranchers who live and work on our Western landscape. There, they might gain an on-the-ground perspective other than their narrowly defined agenda. As the old Greek shepherds -- echoing the ancient Greek philosophers -- say, “Everything in moderation.” Yet the campaign to end Wildlife Services is anything but moderate; it’s fraught with melodrama and spin-doctoring. Since biblical times, domestic livestock and crops have needed protection from predators and scavengers. Domestic livestock and agriculture have enabled mankind to explore and establish settlements, and have played a major role in providing the comforts we expect today. These days, though, most Americans are several generations removed from production agriculture, and most don’t realize what’s required to put a meal on their table. Wildlife Services fulfills a critical role in protecting American agriculture, yet it is portrayed by extremists as “slaughtering and persecuting” wildlife. It’s true that Wildlife Services kills over a million animals a year, but the vast majority are birds that cause crop and feedlot damage. Is this an unpleasant thought? Of course, but is it necessary? Yes. Does Wildlife Services kill native carnivores? Yes, but is it necessary? Yes. Does it harm the viability of the overall wildlife population? Biologists will tell you it absolutely does not. Do you want your home occupied by mice, or it is all right to kill them?....
New state law rewards water right holders who conserve New legislation now offers Colorado water- right holders added protection if they lease or donate water rights to the Colorado Water Conservation Board for nonconsumptive purposes. House Bill 1280, sponsored by Fort Collins Democrat Rep. Randy Fischer, made its way downstream and onto Gov. Bill Ritter's desk last month where it was signed into law. Conservationists are trumpeting the bill as a good fix to existing state law that allowed water rights to be donated or leased for conservation purposes but didn't protect the rights during the lease time. In Colorado, a water right is partially defined by historic uses, which change and can be considered "abandoned" if the water holder doesn't use it for long periods of time. "For too long, ranchers and farmers could lose their water rights if they didn't use all the water they were given annually," Fischer said. "We live in a large, dry Western state that's susceptible to drought, and it's time we reward - not punish - those who conserve. This legislation gives landowners an important incentive to turn off the tap."....
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a … tree? With the ski season over, it's now time for someone else to get air on Bald Mountain. If all goes to plan, Sun Valley Co. will begin flying cut trees off Baldy's slopes on Monday, May 12, according to Joe Miczulski, winter sports specialist for the U.S. Forest Service's Ketchum Ranger District. The trees will be flown whole, with limbs still attached, and dropped off at the River Run parking lot. The project, which will clear the trees already cut to create the line for the new Roundhouse Gondola, is expected to take between two and three days to complete. To ensure public safety, Sun Valley Co. is working with local law enforcement to detour traffic and trail users around portions of roads and the Wood River Trail that will be under the helicopter's flight path....
Chasing sheds Snow falls on a string of 115 pickup trucks parked at the north end of the National Elk Refuge early Thursday morning. The men who slept in the trucks the night before cook eggs on camp stoves and sip coffee from tin cups like cowboys. They reminisce about the raucous night with newfound friends who have lived in the trucks in front of and behind them for the last night or two or three. In less than an hour, the caravan will lurch forward and snake through the refuge to the Bridger-Teton National Forest, where the men will hunt for antlers discarded by elk who wintered on the refuge or nearby. Lucky hunters will find dead elk near the creek and carry whole heads, complete with ivory canine teeth and full racks, back to their trucks. Three guys from Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, swear they were the first in town Monday night. They’ve been sleeping in their trucks since then. You have to come early to get a good spot in line, said Keith Jackson, 24. And a position at the front can make all the difference. If you’re in the rear, the other guys will scoop up all the antlers before you get there. Elk refuge officials allow antler hunters to start lining up on the refuge at 8 a.m. the day before the hunt....
Feds OK land use for 500-mile endurance race Federal land managers have given the go-ahead for Primal Quest Montana, a 500-mile adventure-endurance race beginning in late June. Competitors will traverse southwestern Montana mountain peaks, rivers and backcountry by foot, mountain bike and boat. The event runs day and night and could include as many as 90 four-person teams. The race will start June 23rd at Big Sky Resort, and conclude back in Big Sky on July 2nd. In between, the teams will cross the Tobacco Root, Madison, Gallatin, Bridger, Bangtail and Crazy mountains and will race on the Yellowstone and Gallatin rivers. The race ran into a few complications early in the planning stages when the federal land agencies outlined the race route, which would have spoiled the need for on-the-spot navigation skills during the race. But the route has since been amended and the integrity of that aspect of the race preserved, Primal Quest director Don Mann told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle in a story Monday....
It's All Trew: Early settlers threw mega-wedding There was a time in Texas history when our grand state still belonged to Mexico, where the law required all Colonists to adopt the Catholic faith to become Mexican citizens. Plus, you had to be a bonafide Mexican citizen to own land and, of course, all Colonists wanted to own land. Complicating the problem, only marriages performed by a Catholic priest were recognized. The remoteness of the frontier left few if any priests available. Not to be constrained by technicalities, a process was adopted whereby couples could be bonded. They merely signed an agreement to be married by a priest at the first opportunity and meanwhile could live as legally wedded couples. Passion triumphed again. As time passed there were a lot of children born, many bonded "pregnant" wives, a few couples who decided to "unbond" by splitting the sheet and tearing up the agreement and going on about their way in the singular. Finally a priest arrived in the area to rescue the bonded colonists from "heresy and infidelity" and to baptize the children. Now, if you haven't attended a Catholic wedding recently, it takes awhile. Also, entertainment and fun was hard to come by on the frontier. This opportunity was too good to pass up. The priest was overwhelmed by the number of couples needing his services and decided to marry them in groups of six. Not only were the number of waiting couples astonishing, there were swarms of unbaptized children running wild up and down the creeks....
Subsea storage may fix our CO2 problem Researchers are looking beneath the world's deep, cold waters for places to put the greenhouse gases that may be warming its atmosphere. A growing body of research predicts deep subsea rock formations may be ideal for carbon sequestration — the process of storing carbon dioxide emissions underground to keep them from entering the Earth's atmosphere and contributing to climate change. A number of researchers already are conducting projects to inject CO2 in onshore formations to see if large amounts of the greenhouse gas can be stored underground indefinitely. Daniel Schrag, a professor at Harvard University's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, says the high pressures and low temperatures found below the sea floor — 10,000 feet or more underwater — provide a nearly foolproof way to keep CO2 stored. In those conditions CO2 becomes a liquid more dense than water that will not rise up to the ocean floor....
Reservoir larger than Manhattan planned to help Everglades Around South Florida's vast sugar cane fields, where turtles grow to the size of basketballs and alligators own the marsh, the silence of the swamp is broken by the sound of rumbling trucks and explosions. The earth-moving equipment and high explosives are laying the foundation for a mammoth construction project: a reservoir bigger than Manhattan designed to revive the ecosystem of the once-famed River of Grass. More than a century after the first homes and farms took shape in the Everglades, decades of flood-control projects have left the region parched and near ecological collapse. Now crews are building what will be the world's largest aboveground manmade reservoir to restore some natural water flow to the wetlands. The reservoir, estimated to cost up to $800 million, is the largest and most expensive part of a sweeping state and federal restoration effort. Most man-made reservoirs are built in canyons or valleys and use a natural water source such as a river to fill in behind a dam. This one will stand on its own, contained within earth-and-concrete walls much like an aboveground swimming pool larger than many cities. Planners hope to eventually double its size....
BLM: Ranch likely to be drilled A local rancher’s bid to protect most of his largely undeveloped land south of Collbran from natural gas drilling likely has failed, according to the Bureau of Land Management. Protests filed with the federal agency have failed to persuade the BLM to remove a 2,060-acre subsurface parcel from an upcoming lease sale, according to agency spokesman Jim Sample. “Yes, it’s still in the sale,” Sample said Monday. “It wasn’t deferred.” The parcel, underneath the Parker Basin Ranch, south of Collbran along 58 Road, is one of 49 federal tracts, totaling 31,430 acres, up for auction Thursday at the BLM’s Lakewood office. Sample said there is a slight chance the parcel could be removed from the sale at the last minute. Robert Lapsley, owner of the Parker Basin Ranch, said he was disappointed to hear the BLM plans to open up part of his more than 3,300-acre ranch to natural gas development. “The areas that they are talking about drilling is a calving area for the local elk herd,” Lapsley said. “Personally I just think they could find something better (to develop).” Lapsley, a California-based developer who has been visiting the area his entire life, said he purchased the ranch in June and placed nearly all of the land in a conservation easement....
3 states head to court to keep control over wolves Three states are defending their ability to sustain a gray wolf population in the Northern Rockies, asking to be heard in a federal lawsuit that seeks to return the wolves to the endangered species list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to remove the gray wolf from the list in March, saying the species had recovered from near-extermination in the region. That transferred wolf management to Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, which are planning what would be the first public hunts in decades. The lawsuit filed last week by 12 environmental and animal rights groups seeks to block the hunts, but the three states that filed paperwork with the court Monday and Tuesday hope to fend off the litigation so the hunts can proceed. Officials from the states said Tuesday that they can be trusted to sustain wolves without federal oversight. The hunts, they said, are needed in part to control wolf packs that have been killing an increasing number of livestock....
Predator control looks a lot different on the ground The extremists who are on a mission to eliminate the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services would do well to spend time with ranchers who live and work on our Western landscape. There, they might gain an on-the-ground perspective other than their narrowly defined agenda. As the old Greek shepherds -- echoing the ancient Greek philosophers -- say, “Everything in moderation.” Yet the campaign to end Wildlife Services is anything but moderate; it’s fraught with melodrama and spin-doctoring. Since biblical times, domestic livestock and crops have needed protection from predators and scavengers. Domestic livestock and agriculture have enabled mankind to explore and establish settlements, and have played a major role in providing the comforts we expect today. These days, though, most Americans are several generations removed from production agriculture, and most don’t realize what’s required to put a meal on their table. Wildlife Services fulfills a critical role in protecting American agriculture, yet it is portrayed by extremists as “slaughtering and persecuting” wildlife. It’s true that Wildlife Services kills over a million animals a year, but the vast majority are birds that cause crop and feedlot damage. Is this an unpleasant thought? Of course, but is it necessary? Yes. Does Wildlife Services kill native carnivores? Yes, but is it necessary? Yes. Does it harm the viability of the overall wildlife population? Biologists will tell you it absolutely does not. Do you want your home occupied by mice, or it is all right to kill them?....
New state law rewards water right holders who conserve New legislation now offers Colorado water- right holders added protection if they lease or donate water rights to the Colorado Water Conservation Board for nonconsumptive purposes. House Bill 1280, sponsored by Fort Collins Democrat Rep. Randy Fischer, made its way downstream and onto Gov. Bill Ritter's desk last month where it was signed into law. Conservationists are trumpeting the bill as a good fix to existing state law that allowed water rights to be donated or leased for conservation purposes but didn't protect the rights during the lease time. In Colorado, a water right is partially defined by historic uses, which change and can be considered "abandoned" if the water holder doesn't use it for long periods of time. "For too long, ranchers and farmers could lose their water rights if they didn't use all the water they were given annually," Fischer said. "We live in a large, dry Western state that's susceptible to drought, and it's time we reward - not punish - those who conserve. This legislation gives landowners an important incentive to turn off the tap."....
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a … tree? With the ski season over, it's now time for someone else to get air on Bald Mountain. If all goes to plan, Sun Valley Co. will begin flying cut trees off Baldy's slopes on Monday, May 12, according to Joe Miczulski, winter sports specialist for the U.S. Forest Service's Ketchum Ranger District. The trees will be flown whole, with limbs still attached, and dropped off at the River Run parking lot. The project, which will clear the trees already cut to create the line for the new Roundhouse Gondola, is expected to take between two and three days to complete. To ensure public safety, Sun Valley Co. is working with local law enforcement to detour traffic and trail users around portions of roads and the Wood River Trail that will be under the helicopter's flight path....
Chasing sheds Snow falls on a string of 115 pickup trucks parked at the north end of the National Elk Refuge early Thursday morning. The men who slept in the trucks the night before cook eggs on camp stoves and sip coffee from tin cups like cowboys. They reminisce about the raucous night with newfound friends who have lived in the trucks in front of and behind them for the last night or two or three. In less than an hour, the caravan will lurch forward and snake through the refuge to the Bridger-Teton National Forest, where the men will hunt for antlers discarded by elk who wintered on the refuge or nearby. Lucky hunters will find dead elk near the creek and carry whole heads, complete with ivory canine teeth and full racks, back to their trucks. Three guys from Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, swear they were the first in town Monday night. They’ve been sleeping in their trucks since then. You have to come early to get a good spot in line, said Keith Jackson, 24. And a position at the front can make all the difference. If you’re in the rear, the other guys will scoop up all the antlers before you get there. Elk refuge officials allow antler hunters to start lining up on the refuge at 8 a.m. the day before the hunt....
Feds OK land use for 500-mile endurance race Federal land managers have given the go-ahead for Primal Quest Montana, a 500-mile adventure-endurance race beginning in late June. Competitors will traverse southwestern Montana mountain peaks, rivers and backcountry by foot, mountain bike and boat. The event runs day and night and could include as many as 90 four-person teams. The race will start June 23rd at Big Sky Resort, and conclude back in Big Sky on July 2nd. In between, the teams will cross the Tobacco Root, Madison, Gallatin, Bridger, Bangtail and Crazy mountains and will race on the Yellowstone and Gallatin rivers. The race ran into a few complications early in the planning stages when the federal land agencies outlined the race route, which would have spoiled the need for on-the-spot navigation skills during the race. But the route has since been amended and the integrity of that aspect of the race preserved, Primal Quest director Don Mann told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle in a story Monday....
It's All Trew: Early settlers threw mega-wedding There was a time in Texas history when our grand state still belonged to Mexico, where the law required all Colonists to adopt the Catholic faith to become Mexican citizens. Plus, you had to be a bonafide Mexican citizen to own land and, of course, all Colonists wanted to own land. Complicating the problem, only marriages performed by a Catholic priest were recognized. The remoteness of the frontier left few if any priests available. Not to be constrained by technicalities, a process was adopted whereby couples could be bonded. They merely signed an agreement to be married by a priest at the first opportunity and meanwhile could live as legally wedded couples. Passion triumphed again. As time passed there were a lot of children born, many bonded "pregnant" wives, a few couples who decided to "unbond" by splitting the sheet and tearing up the agreement and going on about their way in the singular. Finally a priest arrived in the area to rescue the bonded colonists from "heresy and infidelity" and to baptize the children. Now, if you haven't attended a Catholic wedding recently, it takes awhile. Also, entertainment and fun was hard to come by on the frontier. This opportunity was too good to pass up. The priest was overwhelmed by the number of couples needing his services and decided to marry them in groups of six. Not only were the number of waiting couples astonishing, there were swarms of unbaptized children running wild up and down the creeks....
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Biofuel Laws Not Sole Reason for Food Shortages, Say Panelists Congress is pitting U.S. energy needs against world hunger, said members of a bipartisan panel convened to discuss the unintentional effects that bio-energy may have on the world's food supply. The event was hosted by Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) at the Library of Congress on Monday. Other experts on the panel, however, argued that government regulations requiring the dilution of gasoline with corn-based ethanol is not solely to blame for hunger around the world, and that the rising demand for corn can be met by the market with time and increased technology. "Congress needs to revisit these food-for-fuel policies. We really shouldn't be pitting our fuel needs against hunger and the environment," said Scott Faber, vice president of foreign affairs for the Grocery Manufacturers Association. "I don't think any member of Congress would have voted for this legislation if they had known that the prices of corn would jump like this." As demand rises for corn, from which ethanol is derived, the number of acres used to grow wheat in the U.S. has contracted, The Washington Post reported recently, contributing to a shortage of wheat on the world market and an overall increase in world grain prices. But Jon Doggett, vice president of foreign policy at the National Corn Grower's Association, claimed that because of high demand and developments in technology, the market soon will correct itself and there will be plenty of corn to go around. "You have to remember that ethanol is becoming a larger slice of a growing pie," said Doggett. "For example, the state of Iowa today produces more corn in a single year than what the entire country could produce in a year during the 1930s." Dr. Bob Young, chief economist for the American Farm Bureau, agreed that before Congress reacts to rising food prices, farmers should be given a chance to try to meet the demand. But Faber argued that regardless of increased capability to produce grains, both corn and land that would have been dedicated to food are now being used for fuel and that this is driving prices up -- the prices of not just corn-based products, but also of dairy, meat and eggs....
Food and Federal Fuel Follies Worse, at least one prominent scientist worries that ethanol production could hurt the environment it's supposed to protect. "Biofuel from corn doesn't seem very beneficial when you consider its full environmental costs," according to Dr. William Laurance, a scientist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The $11 billion a year American taxpayers spend to subsidize corn producers "is having some surprising global consequences," he says. That includes Amazon forests being clear cut so farmers can plant soybeans. Unfortunately the cornfield isn't the only place where federal policy is causing troubles. Our country is also experiencing a shortage of wheat -- partly because many wheat farmers have switched to corn, and partly because Washington pays them whether they grow wheat or not. In 1996 lawmakers passed "legislation allowing wheat growers for the first time to switch to other crops and still collect government subsidies. The result is that farmers received federal wheat payments last year on 15 million acres more than were planted," The Washington Post recently reported. Corn is the answer to our food problems, not our fuel problems. The World Bank estimates that the amount of corn needed to fill the gas tank of an SUV is enough to feed one person for an entire year. That's a tradeoff the world can no longer afford....
GOP senators seek hold on ethanol mandate Senate Republicans have asked environmental regulators to use their power to halt the country's plans to expand ethanol production amid rising food prices. Twenty-four Republican senators, including presidential candidate John McCain of Arizona, sent a letter Friday to the Environmental Protection Agency suggesting that it waive, or restructure, rules that require a fivefold increase in ethanol production over the next 15 years. Congress passed a law last year mandating an increase to 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol by 2015 and 36 billion by 2022. But McCain and other Republicans said those rules should be suspended to put more corn back into the food supply for animal feed and to encourage farmers to plant other crops. "This subsidized [ethanol] program - paid for by taxpayer dollars - has contributed to pain at the cash register, at the dining room table, and a devastating food crisis throughout the world," McCain said in a statement. A spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency said regulators will consider the economic impact of renewable-fuel requirements when deciding whether to suspend the rules. The agency has the power to waive or restructure federal requirements if they cause harm....Vote for a law, and then ask the federal agency to not implement the law. Way to go.
Food and Federal Fuel Follies Worse, at least one prominent scientist worries that ethanol production could hurt the environment it's supposed to protect. "Biofuel from corn doesn't seem very beneficial when you consider its full environmental costs," according to Dr. William Laurance, a scientist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The $11 billion a year American taxpayers spend to subsidize corn producers "is having some surprising global consequences," he says. That includes Amazon forests being clear cut so farmers can plant soybeans. Unfortunately the cornfield isn't the only place where federal policy is causing troubles. Our country is also experiencing a shortage of wheat -- partly because many wheat farmers have switched to corn, and partly because Washington pays them whether they grow wheat or not. In 1996 lawmakers passed "legislation allowing wheat growers for the first time to switch to other crops and still collect government subsidies. The result is that farmers received federal wheat payments last year on 15 million acres more than were planted," The Washington Post recently reported. Corn is the answer to our food problems, not our fuel problems. The World Bank estimates that the amount of corn needed to fill the gas tank of an SUV is enough to feed one person for an entire year. That's a tradeoff the world can no longer afford....
GOP senators seek hold on ethanol mandate Senate Republicans have asked environmental regulators to use their power to halt the country's plans to expand ethanol production amid rising food prices. Twenty-four Republican senators, including presidential candidate John McCain of Arizona, sent a letter Friday to the Environmental Protection Agency suggesting that it waive, or restructure, rules that require a fivefold increase in ethanol production over the next 15 years. Congress passed a law last year mandating an increase to 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol by 2015 and 36 billion by 2022. But McCain and other Republicans said those rules should be suspended to put more corn back into the food supply for animal feed and to encourage farmers to plant other crops. "This subsidized [ethanol] program - paid for by taxpayer dollars - has contributed to pain at the cash register, at the dining room table, and a devastating food crisis throughout the world," McCain said in a statement. A spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency said regulators will consider the economic impact of renewable-fuel requirements when deciding whether to suspend the rules. The agency has the power to waive or restructure federal requirements if they cause harm....Vote for a law, and then ask the federal agency to not implement the law. Way to go.
Land Rights Network
American Land Rights Association
PO Box 400 - Battle Ground, WA 98604
Phone: 360-687-3087 - Fax: 360-687-2973
E-mail: alra@pacifier.com
Web Address: http://www.landrights.org
Legislative Office: 507 Seward Square SE - Washington, DC 20003
Corps And WA Ports Threaten Colf Family Farm With Eminent Domain
The Corps of Engineers is in the middle of a shipping channel dredging project of 106 miles of the Columbia River from its mouth to the cities of Portland, Oregon and Vancouver Washington.
As part of the project, the Corps must mitigate damage to wetlands caused by the project. They have chosen to take 70% of what they need from one family, the Colf Family of Woodland, Washington.
The Colf farming family is actively led by 91-year-old Margaret Colf.
Nancy Colf, Margaret's daughter, is head of the Family farming operation.
The Colf Family has been farming the area since 1870. They don't want to sell. They are farmers. They want to keep the land in agriculture. The Colf family is not now and never has been a willing seller. They are now and have continued to talk to the Corps of Engineers to discuss various options and solutions because the Corps has placed a gun at their head by threatening eminent domain.
The Colf Family has been through nine years of hell dealing with the Corps of Engineers. The Corps is now threatening eminent domain using the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to carry out their eminent domain threat on behalf of the Ports of Vancouver, Woodland, Longview and Kalama along the Columbia River. The Ports would eventually end up with ownership of the Colf Farm land.
The Corps has identified eight other sites along the Columbia that are appropriate for this wetlands mitigation. There are lots of willing sellers of land that can be used for wetlands mitigation along the 106 mile affected area of the Columbia River. That does not seem to matter to the Corps. They have targeted the Colf Family and plan to take their land and destroy an active and historic family farm.
The Colf Family has repeatedly offered compromise and alternate solutions. Often they have not been able to get the Corp or port officials to even talk to them.
It is ironic that the Ports have lots of land that could be used for mitigation purposes. Those lands don't seem to count. They would rather destroy farmers.
Agriculture is important to America. Small farms are disappearing every year. It is easy to see that the Corps of Engineers is part of the reason for this loss. They have been heavy handed and threatening in the process.
It is important that every farmer and agriculture advocate stand up and fight for proud farm families like the Colf. It is only by farmers standing together and working in unison to protect farming and family agriculture operations is there a chance to save and protect productive family farms.
Action Items -- What You Can Do:
-----1. Please tape a copy of this e-mail to the front of your refrigerator door so you can make at least three or four calls a day, and send three e-mails or faxes a day.
This is your refrigerator to do list.
-----2. Call your Congressman and both Senators and urge them to reduce the budget of the Corps of Engineers. They'll have a hard time using eminent domain if they don't have the money. You may call any Congressman at (202) 225-3121. Call any Senator at (202) 224-3121.
-----3. Call, fax and e-mail the local Congressman, Brian Baird (D-WA). Phone: (202) 225-3536. Fax: (202) 225-3478. E-mail: Andrew Dohrmann - andrew.dohrmann@mail.house.gov and Hilary Cain - hilary.cain@mail.house.gov. Vancouver Office: Phone: (360) 695-6292. Fax: (360) 695-6197. E-mail: kelly.love@mail.house.gov.
Your message to Rep. Baird and Senators Murray and Cantwell below is that Congress should deny the Corps and local ports any funds to use eminent domain against the Colf Family Farm. All Federal funding for any of the Ports should be shut off. The entire Corps budget should be examined closely for other abuses like this one that is taking place against the Colfs.
ALRA is informed by knowledgeable people that the Corps is doing the same thing to many other families that they are doing to the Colf Family. It is time the Corps and its officials got the credit they deserve. The Corps of Engineers needs to become good neighbors or get their funding cut or eliminated as much as possible.
-----American Land Rights is interested in hearing back from anyone who knows of other examples of abuses and threats by the Corps against other farmers and landowners. ALRA wants to hear about any eminent domain actions by the Corps. We just need a name and location of the victims. A phone, fax and e-mail would also help. The more we publicize these horror stories, the more difficult it will be for the Corps to get money from Congress....
American Land Rights Association
PO Box 400 - Battle Ground, WA 98604
Phone: 360-687-3087 - Fax: 360-687-2973
E-mail: alra@pacifier.com
Web Address: http://www.landrights.org
Legislative Office: 507 Seward Square SE - Washington, DC 20003
Corps And WA Ports Threaten Colf Family Farm With Eminent Domain
The Corps of Engineers is in the middle of a shipping channel dredging project of 106 miles of the Columbia River from its mouth to the cities of Portland, Oregon and Vancouver Washington.
As part of the project, the Corps must mitigate damage to wetlands caused by the project. They have chosen to take 70% of what they need from one family, the Colf Family of Woodland, Washington.
The Colf farming family is actively led by 91-year-old Margaret Colf.
Nancy Colf, Margaret's daughter, is head of the Family farming operation.
The Colf Family has been farming the area since 1870. They don't want to sell. They are farmers. They want to keep the land in agriculture. The Colf family is not now and never has been a willing seller. They are now and have continued to talk to the Corps of Engineers to discuss various options and solutions because the Corps has placed a gun at their head by threatening eminent domain.
The Colf Family has been through nine years of hell dealing with the Corps of Engineers. The Corps is now threatening eminent domain using the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to carry out their eminent domain threat on behalf of the Ports of Vancouver, Woodland, Longview and Kalama along the Columbia River. The Ports would eventually end up with ownership of the Colf Farm land.
The Corps has identified eight other sites along the Columbia that are appropriate for this wetlands mitigation. There are lots of willing sellers of land that can be used for wetlands mitigation along the 106 mile affected area of the Columbia River. That does not seem to matter to the Corps. They have targeted the Colf Family and plan to take their land and destroy an active and historic family farm.
The Colf Family has repeatedly offered compromise and alternate solutions. Often they have not been able to get the Corp or port officials to even talk to them.
It is ironic that the Ports have lots of land that could be used for mitigation purposes. Those lands don't seem to count. They would rather destroy farmers.
Agriculture is important to America. Small farms are disappearing every year. It is easy to see that the Corps of Engineers is part of the reason for this loss. They have been heavy handed and threatening in the process.
It is important that every farmer and agriculture advocate stand up and fight for proud farm families like the Colf. It is only by farmers standing together and working in unison to protect farming and family agriculture operations is there a chance to save and protect productive family farms.
Action Items -- What You Can Do:
-----1. Please tape a copy of this e-mail to the front of your refrigerator door so you can make at least three or four calls a day, and send three e-mails or faxes a day.
This is your refrigerator to do list.
-----2. Call your Congressman and both Senators and urge them to reduce the budget of the Corps of Engineers. They'll have a hard time using eminent domain if they don't have the money. You may call any Congressman at (202) 225-3121. Call any Senator at (202) 224-3121.
-----3. Call, fax and e-mail the local Congressman, Brian Baird (D-WA). Phone: (202) 225-3536. Fax: (202) 225-3478. E-mail: Andrew Dohrmann - andrew.dohrmann@mail.house.gov and Hilary Cain - hilary.cain@mail.house.gov. Vancouver Office: Phone: (360) 695-6292. Fax: (360) 695-6197. E-mail: kelly.love@mail.house.gov.
Your message to Rep. Baird and Senators Murray and Cantwell below is that Congress should deny the Corps and local ports any funds to use eminent domain against the Colf Family Farm. All Federal funding for any of the Ports should be shut off. The entire Corps budget should be examined closely for other abuses like this one that is taking place against the Colfs.
ALRA is informed by knowledgeable people that the Corps is doing the same thing to many other families that they are doing to the Colf Family. It is time the Corps and its officials got the credit they deserve. The Corps of Engineers needs to become good neighbors or get their funding cut or eliminated as much as possible.
-----American Land Rights is interested in hearing back from anyone who knows of other examples of abuses and threats by the Corps against other farmers and landowners. ALRA wants to hear about any eminent domain actions by the Corps. We just need a name and location of the victims. A phone, fax and e-mail would also help. The more we publicize these horror stories, the more difficult it will be for the Corps to get money from Congress....
Monday, May 05, 2008
Nanny Rips Baby Girl From Jaws of Coyote in California Sandbox A nanny pulled a 2-year-old girl from the jaws of a coyote when the animal attacked the toddler and tried to carry her away in its mouth, officials said. The girl was playing Friday in a sandbox at Alterra Park in Chino Hills in San Bernardino County. Around 10:30 a.m., the caretaker heard screaming and saw a coyote trying to carry the child off in its mouth, officials said. The babysitter grabbed the child and pulled her from the coyote's grasp, the sheriff's department said in a statement. The coyote then ran off into nearby brush. The child suffered wounds to her buttocks and was taken to Chino Valley Medical Center and was later released, director of nursing Anne Marie Robertson said. She was later transported to Loma Linda University Medical Center to receive the rabies vaccine. San Bernardino County Animal Control and the State Department of Fish and Game were searching for the animal, Wiltshire said. Miller said there was another attack in the area in October when a coyote bit a 3-year-old girl playing in a cul-de-sac. The girl needed treatment for puncture wounds to the head and thigh, Miller said.
Does 'climate change' mean 'changing data'? Methodology used by NASA to estimate rates of climate change are resulting in dramatic shifts in previously published historical temperature data, causing figures for estimated global surface temperature prior to 1970 to now be lower and figures since 1970 to now be higher – and appearing to provide evidence for those who say the Earth is warming. John Goetz, writing last month in the science blog Climate Audit, analyzed the way NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies calculates estimated global surface temperatures and showed that the addition of new, contemporary data could "have a ripple effect all the way back to the beginning of a [weather] station's history." Goetz found 32 different versions of published global annual averages going back to Sept. 24, 2005, that showed the published figures – figures used as a baseline to demonstrate change through time – changing hundreds of times. "On average 20% of the historical record was modified 16 times in the last 2 1/2 years," he wrote. "The largest single jump was 0.27 °C. This occurred between the Oct. 13, 2006 and Jan. 15, 2007 records when Aug 2006 changed from an anomoly of +0.43 °C to +0.70 °C, a change of nearly 68 percent." Temperature anomalies – differences between the average measured global air temperature and some long-term mean – are primary data for studies of climate change. The magnitude of the changes in the reworked historical data observed by Goetz – 0.27 °C – is more that a third of the total average increase in global air temperature near the Earth's surface – 0.74 ± 0.18 °C – that has occurred over the last century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change....
Enviro rules prevent man from going green A man was just trying to go green with his new house construction project in Denver, until he was told by the city he would be penalized $9,000 for doing so. The report comes from William Porter, a writer for the Denver Post, who outlined the situation confronting Kent Oakes. "Oakes and his wife want to build a home on South Birch Street in University Hills. They plan to scrape the existing frame house and replace it with the one in which they'll spend their retirement years," the newspaper reported. "We want to build it as green as possible, and that includes solar panels on the roof," Oakes reported. But when workers from the solar system company arrived, they brought with them some bad news: a large honeylocust tree that towers over the southwest corner would block the sunlight to the system. "It is a good tree and I'd like to keep it, but it just won't let the solar work," Oakes told the newspaper. In getting approval from the city for his plans, he noted that the tree would have to go. All right, responded Douglas Schoch, of the city's forestry division. But that will be a penalty of $9,000, because that's what the city has decided the tree is worth. And there's no appeal process....
Florida Trucks Avoid Castration provision in a highway safety bill that would have banned drivers from attaching replica bull testicles to their rear bumpers was snipped from the legislation. The bill will now go to Governor Crist's desk. Republican Senator Carey Baker had sponsored the amendment that would have allowed police to give drivers a 60 dollar ticket for displaying the dangling decorations. The House did not have the amendment in its version of the bill. Senators had engaged in a somewhat heated debate over the issue two weeks ago.
Does 'climate change' mean 'changing data'? Methodology used by NASA to estimate rates of climate change are resulting in dramatic shifts in previously published historical temperature data, causing figures for estimated global surface temperature prior to 1970 to now be lower and figures since 1970 to now be higher – and appearing to provide evidence for those who say the Earth is warming. John Goetz, writing last month in the science blog Climate Audit, analyzed the way NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies calculates estimated global surface temperatures and showed that the addition of new, contemporary data could "have a ripple effect all the way back to the beginning of a [weather] station's history." Goetz found 32 different versions of published global annual averages going back to Sept. 24, 2005, that showed the published figures – figures used as a baseline to demonstrate change through time – changing hundreds of times. "On average 20% of the historical record was modified 16 times in the last 2 1/2 years," he wrote. "The largest single jump was 0.27 °C. This occurred between the Oct. 13, 2006 and Jan. 15, 2007 records when Aug 2006 changed from an anomoly of +0.43 °C to +0.70 °C, a change of nearly 68 percent." Temperature anomalies – differences between the average measured global air temperature and some long-term mean – are primary data for studies of climate change. The magnitude of the changes in the reworked historical data observed by Goetz – 0.27 °C – is more that a third of the total average increase in global air temperature near the Earth's surface – 0.74 ± 0.18 °C – that has occurred over the last century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change....
Enviro rules prevent man from going green A man was just trying to go green with his new house construction project in Denver, until he was told by the city he would be penalized $9,000 for doing so. The report comes from William Porter, a writer for the Denver Post, who outlined the situation confronting Kent Oakes. "Oakes and his wife want to build a home on South Birch Street in University Hills. They plan to scrape the existing frame house and replace it with the one in which they'll spend their retirement years," the newspaper reported. "We want to build it as green as possible, and that includes solar panels on the roof," Oakes reported. But when workers from the solar system company arrived, they brought with them some bad news: a large honeylocust tree that towers over the southwest corner would block the sunlight to the system. "It is a good tree and I'd like to keep it, but it just won't let the solar work," Oakes told the newspaper. In getting approval from the city for his plans, he noted that the tree would have to go. All right, responded Douglas Schoch, of the city's forestry division. But that will be a penalty of $9,000, because that's what the city has decided the tree is worth. And there's no appeal process....
Florida Trucks Avoid Castration provision in a highway safety bill that would have banned drivers from attaching replica bull testicles to their rear bumpers was snipped from the legislation. The bill will now go to Governor Crist's desk. Republican Senator Carey Baker had sponsored the amendment that would have allowed police to give drivers a 60 dollar ticket for displaying the dangling decorations. The House did not have the amendment in its version of the bill. Senators had engaged in a somewhat heated debate over the issue two weeks ago.
FLE
National DNA database gets kickstart from feds With virtually no fanfare, President Bush signed into law a plan ordering the government to take no more than six months to set up a "national contingency plan" to screen newborns' DNA in case of a "public health emergency." The new law requires that the results of the program – including "information … research, and data on newborn screening" – shall be assembled by a "central clearinghouse" and made available on the Internet. According to congressional records, S.1858, sponsored by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., was approved in the Senate Dec. 13, in the House April 8 and signed by Bush April 24. "Soon, under this bill, the DNA of all citizens will be housed in government genomic biobanks and considered governmental property for government research," said Twila Brase, president of the Citizens' Council on Health Care. "The DNA taken at birth from every citizen is essentially owned by the government, and every citizen becomes a potential subject of government-sponsored genetic research." Brase has objected extensively to plans in Minnesota to provide state government the same option now handed to the federal government by Congress. The bill, she said, strips "citizens of genetic privacy rights and DNA property rights. It bill also violates research ethics and the Nuremberg Code. "The public is clueless. S. 1858 imposes a federal agenda of DNA databanking and population-wide genetic research," Brase continued. "It does not require consent and there are no requirements to fully inform parents about the warehousing of their child's DNA for the purpose of genetic research....
Your personal data just got permanently cached at the US border Now that US customs agents have unfettered access to laptops and other electronic devices at borders, a coalition of travel groups, civil liberties advocates and technologists is calling on Congress to rein in the Department of Homeland Security's search and seizure practices. They're also providing practical advice on how to prevent trade secrets and other sensitive data from being breached. In a letter dated Thursday, the group, which includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union and the Business Travel Coalition, called on the House Committee on Homeland Security to ensure searches aren't arbitrary or overly invasive. They also urged the passage of legislation outlawing abusive searches. The letter comes 10 days after a US appeals court ruled Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have the right to rummage through electronic devices even if they have no reason to suspect the hardware holds illegal contents. Not only are they free to view the files during passage; they are also permitted to copy the entire contents of a device. There are no stated policies about what can and can't be done with the data. Over the past few months, several news reports have raised eyebrows after detailing border searches that involved electronic devices. The best known of them is this story from The Washington Post, which recounted the experiences of individuals who were forced to reveal data on cell phones and laptop devices when passing through US borders. One individual even reported some of the call history on her cell phone had been deleted....
Border runners turn to Pacific Surf's up, but Aaron Dorsey fears what he may find paddling out to sea. A body? An abandoned boat or its wreckage? Or smugglers, possibly armed? Already, five boats belonging to smugglers of drugs or illegal immigrants have been found beached or wrecked by reefs in the past six months—a sign that smuggling by sea is the latest route to avoid the new border fence and toughened frontier. While waterborne journeys have been common on the Atlantic with Cuban or Haitian migrants, the Pacific passage is unusual because it's occurring year-round now, not just confined to the warm months when smugglers' bigger boats hide in plain sight amid U.S. marine traffic, federal officials say. Equally troublesome is how smugglers are now using disposable, sometimes barely seaworthy boats, such as a 26-foot watercraft called a panga that held 17 people and was intercepted last week by a federal patrol. The voyages sometimes end as far as 30 miles north of the border, on the shores of upscale Del Mar, known for its horse-racing track. Distant from the base of federal sea and air patrols in San Diego, the illicit crews can land and escape, close to the interstate highway leading to Los Angeles, a hub for illegal immigrants heading to Chicago and elsewhere in the country, federal officials say....
National DNA database gets kickstart from feds With virtually no fanfare, President Bush signed into law a plan ordering the government to take no more than six months to set up a "national contingency plan" to screen newborns' DNA in case of a "public health emergency." The new law requires that the results of the program – including "information … research, and data on newborn screening" – shall be assembled by a "central clearinghouse" and made available on the Internet. According to congressional records, S.1858, sponsored by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., was approved in the Senate Dec. 13, in the House April 8 and signed by Bush April 24. "Soon, under this bill, the DNA of all citizens will be housed in government genomic biobanks and considered governmental property for government research," said Twila Brase, president of the Citizens' Council on Health Care. "The DNA taken at birth from every citizen is essentially owned by the government, and every citizen becomes a potential subject of government-sponsored genetic research." Brase has objected extensively to plans in Minnesota to provide state government the same option now handed to the federal government by Congress. The bill, she said, strips "citizens of genetic privacy rights and DNA property rights. It bill also violates research ethics and the Nuremberg Code. "The public is clueless. S. 1858 imposes a federal agenda of DNA databanking and population-wide genetic research," Brase continued. "It does not require consent and there are no requirements to fully inform parents about the warehousing of their child's DNA for the purpose of genetic research....
Your personal data just got permanently cached at the US border Now that US customs agents have unfettered access to laptops and other electronic devices at borders, a coalition of travel groups, civil liberties advocates and technologists is calling on Congress to rein in the Department of Homeland Security's search and seizure practices. They're also providing practical advice on how to prevent trade secrets and other sensitive data from being breached. In a letter dated Thursday, the group, which includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union and the Business Travel Coalition, called on the House Committee on Homeland Security to ensure searches aren't arbitrary or overly invasive. They also urged the passage of legislation outlawing abusive searches. The letter comes 10 days after a US appeals court ruled Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have the right to rummage through electronic devices even if they have no reason to suspect the hardware holds illegal contents. Not only are they free to view the files during passage; they are also permitted to copy the entire contents of a device. There are no stated policies about what can and can't be done with the data. Over the past few months, several news reports have raised eyebrows after detailing border searches that involved electronic devices. The best known of them is this story from The Washington Post, which recounted the experiences of individuals who were forced to reveal data on cell phones and laptop devices when passing through US borders. One individual even reported some of the call history on her cell phone had been deleted....
Border runners turn to Pacific Surf's up, but Aaron Dorsey fears what he may find paddling out to sea. A body? An abandoned boat or its wreckage? Or smugglers, possibly armed? Already, five boats belonging to smugglers of drugs or illegal immigrants have been found beached or wrecked by reefs in the past six months—a sign that smuggling by sea is the latest route to avoid the new border fence and toughened frontier. While waterborne journeys have been common on the Atlantic with Cuban or Haitian migrants, the Pacific passage is unusual because it's occurring year-round now, not just confined to the warm months when smugglers' bigger boats hide in plain sight amid U.S. marine traffic, federal officials say. Equally troublesome is how smugglers are now using disposable, sometimes barely seaworthy boats, such as a 26-foot watercraft called a panga that held 17 people and was intercepted last week by a federal patrol. The voyages sometimes end as far as 30 miles north of the border, on the shores of upscale Del Mar, known for its horse-racing track. Distant from the base of federal sea and air patrols in San Diego, the illicit crews can land and escape, close to the interstate highway leading to Los Angeles, a hub for illegal immigrants heading to Chicago and elsewhere in the country, federal officials say....
Feds launch 'Gestapo raid' over raw milk A rally has been set for tomorrow in front of the magistrate's office in Mt. Holly, Pa., in support of a Mennonite farmer who has brought the wrath of the government on himself for selling raw milk and other products – an act government prosecutors say violates a number of regulations. That's when the next court hearing is scheduled for Mark Nolt, a Pennsylvania farmer who turned in his state permit to sell raw milk because it didn't allow for the sale of the other products he offered. "They swooped in ... like a bunch of Vikings, handcuffed me and stole $30,000 worth of my milk, cheese and butter," he told the New York Daily News. Jonas Stoltzfus, a fellow farmer and member of the Church of the Brethren, was asked to be a spokesman for Nolt, and confirmed, "Six state troopers and Bill Chirdon of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture trespassed onto his property, and stole $20,000-$250,000 of his product and equipment." A blogger who operates under the name The Complete Patient reported the government, in the form of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, had descended on Nolt's 100-acre farm already in 2007. "Nolt contends that the regulations have not been approved by the legislature and shouldn't apply to him because he is selling directly to consumers, via private contracts that are outside the purview of the state, making a privilege out of a right he believes he has – the right to private contracts," the blogger wrote....
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