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The Environment

(Posts dealing with the environment)

2/16/10 (By Travis)

UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article

1/30/10 ABCnews

1/21/10 (By Travis)

World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown

1/17/10

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.
It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research.

CRU ‘Scientist’ Got $540K ‘Stimulus’

1/03/10 (By Travis)

Putting our economy in the hands of Chavez fans

12/12/09 Herald Sun

Airborne fraction of C02 has not risen in past 150 years, new research finds

1/2/09 Examiner

New studies have found that most of the CO2 emitted by man does not stay in the atmosphere as previously believed. Instead, it is absorbed by terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans.

12/13/09 (By Travis)

US plan to round up wild horses draws opposition

12/7/09

    In recent years, the government has rounded up and relocated wild horses to other lands in the West. Helicopters are used to drive the mustangs toward cowboys with lassos. The cowboys then put the horses onto trucks.

    The BLM spent about $50 million this year to feed, corral and otherwise manage the nation's wild horses, up from $36 million last year. Without contraception or other such measures, mustang herds can double in size about every four years, authorities say.

    The government feeds the wild horses and then worries they will starve and then attempts to move them all around. This example of government trying to play God over nature accomplishes nothing and is a waste of taxpayer money.

Coal company cuts 500 jobs, blames environmentalists

12/9/09 Washington Times

11/29/09 (By Travis)

Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

11/28/09 the Telegraph

This sort of tampering, ideological bias, and conspiracy is not unique to climate change, but is present across multitudes of 'scientific' fields. It is likely an inevitable consequence of government funded research. As we saw with the swine flu, a 'crisis' pushed by 'experts' and 'scientists', these claims deserve the most stringent scrutiny and skepticism.

The Economics of Climate Change / The stakes are too high to treat Climategate as just another academic spat.

11/30/09 WSJ Editorial

The gusher of money that has flowed into climate research does not, by itself, impeach the conclusions reached by the scientists. But it does make clear just how much their professional fortunes became tied to the notion of climate catastrophe. It was the fear of catastrophic climate change, after all, that unleashed the rising ocean of money by which their research came to be funded. Findings that might call the hysteria into question would also, perforce, put at risk the flow of funds into their field.

10/12/09 (By Travis)

What happened to global warming?

9/10/09 BBC

7/27/09 (By Travis)

The climate industry is costing taxpayers $79 billion and counting

7/22/09 transworldnews

Writing grants is big business and university scientists chase the funding, not the other way around. 'Consensus' becomes defined by the bureaucrats at the NIH and other government institutions.

Posted 7/30/08 ( by Travis)

CA. AG Cracks Down On Nestle Bottling Plant
cbs13.com ^ | July 29, 2008

    Attorney General Jerry Brown on Tuesday said he will sue to block a proposed water-bottling operation in Northern California unless its effects on global warming are evaluated.

    The Swiss-based company scaled back its plans in May after years of opposition from environmentalists and a group of McCloud residents. It originally sought to pump more than double the amount of water.

David Palais, Nestle's Northern California natural resource manager, said the company already was planning studies on air and water quality, hazardous materials, traffic conditions and climate change for a new environmental review of the bottling plant.

    He said it failed to include an examination of whether the operation will contribute to global warming through the production of plastic bottles, the operation's electrical demands and the diesel soot and greenhouse gas emissions produced by trucks traveling to and from the plant.

    "It takes massive quantities of oil to produce plastic water bottles and to ship them in diesel trucks across the United States," Brown said in a statement. "Nestle will face swift legal challenge if it does not fully evaluate the environmental impact of diverting millions of gallons of spring water from the McCloud River into billions of plastic water bottles."

    Honestly, the first time I read this I thought it was satire. It appears some of our friends on the left are bent on returning human kind to the stone age.     

    California is so hostile to industry and private enterprise, it will likely only continue to hemorrhage citizens and businesses. 

Posted 6/20/08 ( by Travis)

Penn And Teller Get Hippies To Sign Water Banning Petition

12/6/08 You Tube 

    DiHydroMonoxide Ban! :) The tendency towards this sort of mindless advocacy is indicative of a lot of problems in society. 

    Which reminds me, it is often said that it is one's duty to vote. As in, every good citizen should vote. I sort of disagree with this. I think every good citizen should be informed, opinionated, and educated about the issues. Only then is voting appropriate. An uninformed, uneducated, unaware citizen should find it their duty not to vote. If not, we get a bunch of these water bans thrown into our public policies, as is currently the case. 

Posted 5/11/08 ( by Travis)

Sea lions weren't shot -- maybe poisoned?

5/8/08 Seatlepi.com

    An update to the story a few days ago, it turns out the bureaucrats who reported the sea lions were shot were wrong. 

    The National Marine Fisheries Service is saying dehydration, heat exhaustion or panic could have been factors.

     Probably they forgot to check the traps. So, what we may have is a government agency killing a 'protected' species to 'protect' another 'protected' species.

Posted 5/6/08 ( by Travis)

Protected Seas Lions Shot Dead Because of Protected Salmon
AP ^ | 5/3/08 | WILLIAM McCALL

Posted 3/21/08 ( by Travis)

ETHANOL MADNESS (2006)
Executive Intelligence Review (excerpt) from Technocracy.org ^ | 06/02/2006 | Staff
    Well, first, we'll get 20% less gas mileage from our fuel that way. Second, we can pay a good deal more for fuel, in direct prices and subsidies; in fact, we'll be able to use a fuel whose price is inflating much faster than the price of gasoline. Third, we'll be able to spend tens of billions of dollars more a year in tax revenues, subsidizing ethanol makers, including some of the biggest global cartels. Fourth, we can use up more petrochemical energy making ethanol than we get by using it. Fifth, we can use up large volumes of scarce regions of the country, and overburden our transport infrastructure as well. Sixth, we could soon deny corn exports to nations that need them — maybe even cut our own consumption of corn and burn it in our cars instead...

    And last but not least, we can delay or cut off the revival of nuclear power for industry and economic expansion; instead, we could take a major scientific and technological step backwards, a great leap back toward primitive ages when mankind burned straw for fuel.

    Is this not similar to the previously posted story on how Hydrogen cars pollute more (plus are more expensive) than regular gas cars?

California's Ethanol Follies

7/17/07 Waterbury Republican-American Editorial

Posted 12/9/07 (By Travis)

Everything is Caused by Global Warming (600+ links)

11/29/07 American Thinker

    This list is rich, especially the contradictions such as the following:

    Atlantic less salty, Atlantic more salty

    avalanches reduced, avalanches increased

    bananas destroyed, bananas grow

    coral reefs dying, coral reefs grow

    desert advance, desert retreat

    Europe simultaneously baking and freezing

    fish catches drop,  fish catches rise

    glacial retreat,  glacial growth

    harvest increase, harvest shrinkage

    hibernation ends too soon, hibernation ends too late

    Mt (Everest) shrinking; Mont Blanc grows

    plankton blooms, plankton destabilised, plankton loss

    rainfall increase, rainfall reduction

    rivers dry up, rivers raised

    snowfall increase, snowfall reduction

    trees less colourful, trees more colourful

    So, as we can see global warming has become the new 'fad' amongst reporters, blamed for everything, even oppositely occurring phenomena. Amongst researchers, it increasingly appears what they find is less important than what is to blame for their findings; academia and science is just as politicized, if not more so (due to state funding/control) than other sources. Science follows the (state) money, not the other way around.

Posted 10/18/07 (By Travis)

An interview with Ron Paul about his presidential platform on energy and the environment

10/16/07 Grist.org

    A great articulation of conservative/libertarian philosophy as it deals with the environment. Property rights (and Federalism, which Paul doesn't mention, but perhaps should have) is a simple and common sense approach to dealing with these issues. 

    The only possible weakness I can see in this general theory, is that if someone was to pollute your property, say water supply, but then went bankrupt, you’d be stuck with the damages.    

    I think this is reflective of the need to tighten bankruptcy laws so that people are accountable for their credit and the damage they do to others. Actually ‘tightened’ is a misnomer, the current laws should be repealed to allow contracts to be drawn up between individuals, creditor and lender. Also, people could buy insurance, both the possible polluter and the individual, sort of like uninsured collision insurance for the individual and ‘disaster’ insurance for the possible polluter.

Posted 9/16/07 (By Travis)

Biologists trying to save endangered trout used wrong fish

9/5/07 Denver Post

    A 20-year government effort to restore the population of an endangered native trout in Colorado has made little progress because biologists have been stocking some of the waterways with the wrong fish, a new study says.

    Whoops! Readers may recall, this is somewhat similar to when the government was protecting species like the 'tiny owl' and 'jumping mouse', which didn't exist.

    In 1998, officials projected it would cost $634,000 to bring the greenback to recovery, with the money coming from a variety of sources. It wasn't clear how much of that has been spent. Figures for the recovery project before 1998 weren't available.

    Other federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service, have helped with the recovery program. An overall cost estimate wasn't available.

    In sum, not a great track record of success or even marginal competence in this project.

    University of Colorado professor Andrew Martin, the study's principal investigator, said while the findings might give the recovery program "black eye," the hope is that biologists and agencies will move ahead on recovering the species before it goes extinct.
    "The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan."

    -Ronald Reagan

Posted 7/18/07 (By Travis)

California's Ethanol Follies

7/17/07 Waterbury Republican-American Editorial

    Reprinted in full:

    Sometimes, when a patient has an imaginary illness, the doctor will prescribe harmless pills called placebos. Somehow, they work: The patient thinks the illness is being treated, and the symptoms diminish or go away.

    In 2005, California took a $17 million placebo for global warming. Specifically, the state bought a fleet of 1,138 Chevrolet Impalas and Silverado trucks designed to run on E-85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.

    Trouble is, California has no filling stations that sell E-85. No such stations were scheduled to open until 2009. In the interim, according to the San Jose Mercury News, the "flex-fuel" vehicles traveled a collective 10 million miles and burned more than 413,202 gallons of ordinary gasoline.

    It gets even sillier. The Impalas replaced smaller, more fuel-efficient Ford Focuses so that, in the words of the Mercury News, "the flex-fuel vehicles are actually chugging out more smog and greenhouse gases than many vehicles in the state's old fleet as much as 2,000 tons annually."

    On orders from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state's General Services Department has called for bids to open an ethanol station a few blocks from the state capitol. However, the corn needed for California refineries to make ethanol has to be hauled in from the Midwest, most of it on diesel-powered trains or trucks, further negating any clean-air benefit.

    Said Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute: "This is about California politicians wanting to be leaders in alternative energy. They just jump on whatever is sexy."

    Thus, there is a bright side to California's E-85 vehicle mess. Even if the state overpaid for the vehicles by 10 percent, and even if the vehicles were 10 percent less fuel efficient, the total cost to the state probably wasn't much more than $5 million. As bogus remedies for imaginary maladies go, California is getting off cheaply.

Senators Not Serious on Ethanol

7/20/07 Three Legged Stool

   A couple of days ago, the Club for Growth blog mentioned that the Senate had rejected an amendment to eliminate the 54 cent tariff on imported Ethanol. This strikes me as completely disingenuous at a time when the same Senators are concerned about price gouging for gasoline. Just for fun I used Google Maps to create this map showing how the Senators from each state voted. Now we have a visual representation of where the real price gougers live!

   You will notice the votes cut across party lines and are more regional; a pretty cool map!

Posted 5/19/07 (By Travis)

Enviro Nonsense: So how did it become required classroom viewing?

5/19/07 National Post (Canada)

    First it was his world history class. Then he saw it in his economics class. And his world issues class. And his environment class. In total, 18-year-old McKenzie, a Northern Ontario high schooler, says he has had the film An Inconvenient Truth shown to him by four different teachers this year. <.>

    In England, the government has made the movie part of the public curriculum. In Spain, the government is buying copies of the movie for all of its schools. In Australia, private donors are buying copies for schools.

    The point is not whether this movie or this opinion is accurate or not, although from what I've read there is much in it which is very inaccurate, but whether entire populations should be 'educated' en mass shrouded in such conformity. Especially over the opposition of parents. 

    Another example: 
    Students at Roger Williams University in Briston, Rhode Island, were forced to watch Al Gore’s global warming schlockumentary if they wished to graduate.

Posted 4/4/07 (By Travis)

Plastic-bag ban full of holes

4/2/07 USA today editorial

    The city's Board of Supervisors voted last week to outlaw plastic checkout bags at large supermarkets and chain pharmacies.

    Good intentions? Perhaps. But just one, well a few, problems:

    Plastic bags cost about a penny each, paper costs about a nickel and compostable bags can run as high as 10 cents each.

    Paper bags, meanwhile, generate 70% more air pollutants and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This is because four times as much energy is required to produce paper bags and 85 times as much energy is needed to recycle them. Paper takes up nine times as much space in landfills and doesn't break down there at a substantially faster rate than plastic does.

The Daylight Savings Time Boondoggle

4/2/07 Liberty Papers 

    The move to turn the clocks forward by an hour on March 11 rather than the usual early April date was mandated by the U.S. government as an energy-saving effort.

    But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage.

    “We haven’t seen any measurable impact,” said Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co., one of the nation’s largest power companies, echoing comments from several large utilities.

    This last story is actually surprising because normally government efforts result in the opposite of their intentions, working against the purported purpose of the politicians drafting the measures; however, this action appears to have only a neutral impact, at least on the power savings. Of course, the net impact is still negative because of the millions of dollars and nonmeasurable inconveniences imposed. 

Posted 3/23/07 (By Travis)

Warning to homeowners as the green vision is unveiled

3/14/07 Daily Mail

    Homeowners who refuse to make their properties energy efficient will face financial penalties under drastic government plans to transform Britain into the world's first 'green' economy. <.>

    Ministers yesterday promised deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions that they warned would mean everyone in the country having to 'live, work and travel differently'. <.>

    Mr Blair compared the fight against climate change to the battle against fascism. 

    Massive government expansion and restrictions of freedom is fighting against fascism? Perhaps Mr. Blair has his definitions confused...

Czech leader Klaus fights global warming 'religion'

3/21/07 Reuters

    PRAGUE – Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Wednesday that fighting global warming has turned into a a 'religion' that replaced the ideology of communism and threatens to clip basic freedoms.

    The right-wing president, a free-market champion, wrote to the U.S. Congress that adopting tough environmental policies to fight climate change would have destructive impact on national economies.

    'Communism has been replaced by the threat of an ambitious environmentalism,' Klaus wrote in response to questions from the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce.

    'This ideology preaches earth and nature and under the slogans of their protection – similarly to the old Marxists – wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central, now global, planning of the whole world,' he added.

Dimwits: Why 'Green' Light Bulbs Aren't the Answer to Global Warming

3/13/07 Daily Mail

    They have to be left on all the time, they're made from banned toxins and they won't work in half your household fittings. Yet Europe (and Gordon Brown) says 'green' lightbulbs must replace all our old ones.

    From one of the comments on this thread:

    "I thought that they would be a great idea at the time, so I bought several packages of them at costco for about $2.75 a bulb.

    CAUTION: Although they are only 23 watts, they do overheat and fail in some fixtures that were designed for incandescent bulbs (as the article said - poorly ventilated fixtures). Sometimes the failures are nasty as in my kitchen fixture where one of them actually started burning. The electronics in the base are not as resistant to high temperatures as an ordinary incandescent bulb.

    Plus the life is nowhere near the 10x claimed but rather about the same to 3x longer is what I've experienced. SO they aren't all that great. Oh and BTW I think global warming is the biggest fraud in the last 10 years. I bought them because if they worked as advertised (they didn't) they would have saved me some money on my power bill."

    The last sentence illustrates how government can combat global warming, if in fact it exists: get out of the way and let private industry and the people themselves solve their way out of it. Incidentally, if this company is not forthcoming about their product they should be sued for fraud (not regulated!). :)

Posted 3/4/07 (By Travis)

State Makes Big Fuss Over Local Couple's Vegetable Oil Car Fuel

3/1/07 Herald review

    "They showed me their badges and said they were from the Illinois Department of Revenue," Wetzel said. "I said, 'Come in.' Maybe I shouldn't have."
    So the saga begins...

Posted 9/26/06 (By Travis)

Rare Woodpecker Sends a Town Running for Its Chain Saws

9/24/06 New York Times (AP)

    BOILING SPRING LAKES, N.C., Sept. 23 (AP) — Over the past six months, landowners here have been clear-cutting thousands of trees to keep them from becoming homes for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.

    The chain saws started in February, when the federal Fish and Wildlife Service put Boiling Spring Lakes on notice that rapid development threatened to squeeze out the woodpecker.

    The results can be seen all over town. Along the roadsides, scattered brown bark is all that is left of pine stands. Mayor Joan Kinney has watched with dismay as waterfront lots across from her home on Big Lake have been stripped down to sandy wasteland.

    “It’s ruined the beauty of our city,” Ms. Kinney said.

    (Added to 'The Environment')

Posted 9/26/06 (By Travis)

Senator James Inhoffe Speech on Global Warming

9/25/06 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

    Check this out for a great recap of the history of media and scientific coverage of global warming (and cooling). :)

Posted 7/8/06

Dutch Told To Return Land They Won From The Sea

5/27/06 Telegraph Added to 'Constitutional Issues' and 'The Environment'.

Posted 4/16/06

Tiny Owl May Be Taken Off Endangered List

4/15/05 AP The owl is set to be removed from the endangered species list next month, a move that also will rescind critical habitat designation for 1.2 million acres in Arizona. <.> The Fish and Wildlife Service determined the bird was not a distinct subspecies and therefore not worthy of protection. <.> The decision is likely to be fought by the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.

    So basically, this owl never really existed. Sort of like the previously posted story about the jumping mouse, which cost states and private industry some $100 million to protect before it turned out that it didn't exist either.     

Posted 9/25/05

To elaborate further on the real reasons for higher gasoline prices. Rush Limbaugh put it quite eloquently a few weeks ago on his radio show:

RUSH: So what are the things that can be done about this (higher gas prices)? Well, you wouldn't believe the number of taxes that are in a gallon of gasoline. And it's just like you wouldn't believe the taxes in your phone bill. Do you know you are still paying taxes on your phone bill to make sure that farmers have phones? The Rural Collective Phone tax? You're also still paying a tax on your phone bill for those buildings that Clinton and Gore personally wired for the Internet. Well, it's no different with gasoline. There are so many taxes in a gallon of gasoline, and if all these politicians were that concerned about the economic impact, ladies and gentlemen, the price of gasoline, they could temporarily suspend some of these taxes; they could permanently cut some of these taxes. Oh, no, but they won't do that because there's one thing government will never do without and there's one thing that government will never even do less of, and that's money. Oh, yes. When our taxes are raised, they don't give one thought to whether or not we could absorb it and afford it. But when tax cuts are proposed, the people in the government ask, "Well, how we going to pay for this? Well, how we going to pay for it? How we gonna make up for it? We can't do without that!" But we're expected to. Everybody else is expected to. So the next time you hear some politician trying to get on your good side by bellyaching and moaning about the price of gasoline, why don't you ask him, "Why don't you do something about it, then?"
    Since we can't do anything about imports right now, since we can't go into ANWR (or Florida, or the Atlantic and Pacific coasts), since we can't drill anywhere else and since we have all these stupid, silly different formulations (environmental regulations), why don't you just temporarily suspend some of the taxes in gasoline? Just ask him that. If you're really concerned, if you really want to help us in the back pocket, really want to help us at the family dinner table, really want to help us out here with the family economics and the income, just get rid of some of the taxes in it. It's not that hard to do. And you just watch their reaction: "Well, we need a majority to do that... I don't know what kind of legislation that would require.... That's a good idea, we'll put it in the hopper, I'll throw it around with my staff," blah, blah, blah, blah. Nothing will ever happen on it.

Virgin plans oil refinery

9/14/05 Think you are upset about high gas prices? Maverick British entrepreneur Richard Branson is so furious he wants to build his own oil refinery. Like the rest of the airline industry, Mr Branson's Virgin Atlantic Airways has been stung by higher jet fuel prices and was forced to raise fuel surcharges for the second time in four months.

    "If we don't start now to get more refineries built then fuel prices could literally rocket to $US100-$US200 (per barrel of oil) and the world economy would come to a grinding halt," Branson said in an interview on financial news network CNBC overnight.

    Mr Branson did not say where he wants to put his refinery, but some analysts said he should not look to the US, where no one has built a refinery in 29 years.

    "My immediate reaction to that is: Not in the US," said Paul Flemming, oil analyst at Energy Security Analysis Inc. "That's definitely more pie in the sky than anything."

    In the US, getting a permit could involve years of navigating local, state, and federal regulations and protests from environmental and community groups, analysts say. (emphasis mine)

    Let's compare this to a report sponsored by the World Bank and the International Finance corporation: 

    The report tracks a set of regulatory indicators related to business startup, operation, trade, payment of taxes, and closure by measuring the time and cost associated with various government requirements. For example, an entrepreneur in Mozambique must undergo 14 separate procedures taking 153 days to register a new business. In Sierra Leone if all business taxes were paid they would eat up 164 percent of a company’s gross profits. In Syria, it takes 63 days, 18 documents, and 47 signatures from the time imported goods arrive in ports until they reach the factory gate.

    Isn't it great to see similarities between the United States and these third world countries? However, it is not just gas prices and economic growth that these environmental groups, government bureaucrats, and liberal politicians hurt with their archaic and liberty suppressing regulations. They cost lives:

New Orleans: A Green Genocide

9/13/05 Front Page Magazine 

    As radical environmentalists continue to blame the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina's devastation on President Bush's ecological policies, a mainstream Louisiana media outlet inadvertently disclosed a shocking fact: Environmentalist activists were responsible for spiking a plan that may have saved New Orleans. Decades ago, the Green Left - pursuing its agenda of valuing wetlands and topographical "diversity" over human life - sued to prevent the Army Corps of Engineers from building floodgates that would have prevented significant flooding that resulted from Hurricane Katrina

    In the 1970s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Barrier Project planned to build fortifications at two strategic locations, which would keep massive storms on the Gulf of Mexico from causing Lake Pontchartrain to flood the city. An article in the May 28, 2005, New Orleans Times-Picayune stated, "Under the original plan, floodgate-type structures would have been built at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes to block storm surges from moving from the Gulf into Lake Pontchartrain."
    "The floodgates would have blocked the flow of water from the Gulf of Mexico, through Lake Borgne, through the Rigolets [and Chef Mentuer] into Lake Pontchartrain," declared Professor Gregory Stone, the James P. Morgan Distinguished Professor and Director of the Coastal Studies Institute of Louisiana State University. "This would likely have reduced storm surge coming from the Gulf and into the Lake Pontchartrain," Professor Stone told Michael P. Tremoglie during an interview on September 6, 2005. The professor concluded, "[T]hese floodgates would have alleviated the flooding of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina." Speaker of the House Bob Livingston also referred to environmentalists whose litigation prevented hurricane prevention projects.
    Why was this project aborted? As the Times-Picayune wrote, “Those plans were abandoned after environmental advocates successfully sued to stop the projects as too damaging to the wetlands and the lake's eco-system.” (Emphasis added.) Specifically, in 1977, a state environmentalist group known as Save Our Wetlands (SOWL) sued to have it stopped.

    On December 30, 1977, U.S. District Judge Charles Schwartz Jr. issued an injunction against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lake Pontchartrain hurricane protection project, demanding the engineers draw up a second environmental impact statement, three years after the corps submitted the first one. In one of the most ironic pronouncements of all time, Judge Schwartz wrote, “it is the opinion of the Court that plaintiffs herein have demonstrated that they, and in fact all persons in this area, will be irreparably harmed if the barrier project based upon the August, 1974 FEIS [federal environmental impact statement] is allowed to continue.”

    This story goes on with a more detailed description than I've given. Have any of you seen this story in the main stream media? Doesn't it seem like it should play a central part in the coverage of Hurricane Katrina? After all, the proposed structures were designed to prevent the flooding of Lake Pontchartin:

    Hurricane Katrina pushed Lake Pontchartrain over the flood walls...The spilling water then undermined the walls, and they toppled…Lake Pontchartrain, a body half the size of Rhode Island, was losing about a foot of water every 10 hours into New Orleans.

N.J. Billboard calls state 'Horrible' (Posted 6/4/05)

6/2/05 Associated Press Rather than simply welcoming drivers to the Garden State, a new billboard greeting people entering New Jersey over the Delaware Memorial Bridge slams the state's business climate. "Welcome to New Jersey. A horrible place to do business," reads the billboard message. The glaring, red capital letters represent the revenge - misguided, according to officials - of a developer upset with the state's environmental regulators.

<.> "They (state officials) are antibusiness," he said. "And the state is run by environmentalists." DEP officials say Juliano's anger is misplaced. The agency, after all, has approved four of Juliano's projects over the last three years - each in under seven months.

    So far, the state has done nothing about the billboard, and it's unclear whether it could. "At some point, we'll have to consider action against him," Campbell said, implying a potential legal fight. And within a few weeks, Juliano said he plans to put up two more signs along the Turnpike.

The Rancher's Revenge

5/26/05 Phoenix New Times Detailing how someone finally turned the tables on the environmental groups: That's why Chilton got so mad at the Center for Biological Diversity. The Center tried to make him the bad guy when he, the cowboy, was supposed to be the hero. And that was an attack no cowboy could forgive. (Forgiveness, after all, is for wimps.) And so he sued -- a switch, given that the Center is normally the one filing the lawsuits. Chilton took the case to trial, and won one of the biggest punitive damage awards Arizona is likely to see this year. <.> The Center has filed lawsuits to stop logging, including one in the 1990s that virtually destroyed the timber industry in Arizona and New Mexico. (That suit was to save an owl.) It's also sued to halt the construction of schools (same owl), golf courses (various lizards and squirrels) and even a DreamWorks complex (a bird called the flycatcher). The Center doesn't always get what it wants, but by its estimate, the group has won more than 90 percent of its legal actions -- and it puts the number of such actions at more than 300. We'll return to this owl in a bit. The Forest Service biologist who supervised the chub studies, Stefferud, has donated money to the Center over the years, as he admits. (New Times found records indicating he gave at least $200 in 2002 alone.)

Meanwhile, another Forest Service employee penned a report claiming that the Chiltons' ranching was likely to harm the Lesser Long-Nosed Bat, another endangered species. That employee is married to a biologist who also donated to the Center <.> To the Chiltons, those ties were clear evidence that the government was not a neutral party, simply acting as mediator between their interests and those of the environmentalists. Instead, the government and the environmentalists were one and the same. Read page 6 here for the lies and distortions the Center used against Chilton. Notice how the government and the environmental group were almost one and the same. Government is not a neutral party, Government is almost never a neutral party.

    It's not even environmentalists that make the most use of the environmental laws, it's anyone with a special interest. Thieving unions and their allies are doing the same thing to delay Wall Mart openings in California. Even in the liberal bastion of Martha's Vinyard, people are getting their land usurped by banks that have to hide their identity in order to purchase, for the public, private property. 

    Does any of it help? Let's go back to that owl that the Center was destroying ranches and golf courses and timber industries in order to protect. Or maybe it's a different owl.... who knows? 

Forest Grows, Owls Decline under plan

4/25/05 Seattle Intelligencer PORTLAND, Ore. -- A decade after the Clinton administration reduced logging in national forests in the Northwest, scientists have concluded the forests are growing, but the population of the threatened northern spotted owl has declined. (good comments on this thread) Small towns devastated, people out of work, property lost...

Jumping Mouse Looses Federal Protection

1/30/05 Associated Press WASHINGTON - The Preble's meadow jumping mouse, once seen as a costly impediment to development, is now viewed by the government as a critter that never really existed — and is no longer in need of federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. Based on the study, the Fish and Wildlife Service will propose removing the Preble's mouse from the government's endangered species list about a year from now. It will remain protected until then. Nearly 31,000 acres have been designated critical mouse habitat for the Preble's mouse along streams in Colorado and Wyoming, including large parts of Colorado's Front Range, where sprawl is booming amid the foothills and the prairie. The mouse also has blocked construction of reservoirs despite a continued drought there. <.> Builders, landowners and local governments have spent as much as $100 million by some estimates protecting the Preble's meadow jumping mouse since it was added to the federal list in 1998 as a species whose survival was considered "threatened."

    Look at the environmentalist reaction: "This proposal is a devastating blow to open space across the Front Range, to good science and to the public interest," said Jeremy Nichols, conservation director for the Laramie, Wyo.-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. They don't really about the jumping mouse or, better to just call them, mice, since the JUMPING MOUSE DOESN'T EXIST. They just want to stop building and they will use whatever excuse they can. Building must be stopped and who cares if there is a drought, or people loose their property, or go bankrupt, or loose their jobs. This is why people like Rush Limbaugh call these people and the groups that they belong to Environmental Wackos.

    Conservatives/ Libertarians are not 'anti-environment'. They are simply practical and recognize that if the environmentalists ran this country we would soon be back in the stone age. In fact, free enterprise is the best way to protect the environment. A piece by Michael Novak illustrates this nicely. After all, what is pollution? It's symbolic of the inefficiency of the fuel. Less pollution means more of the fuel is being used. By restricting free market forces these environmental groups are most often accomplishing the opposite of their intentions (ex hydrogen car). Pollution and developing should not be restricted unless it damages other people's property (which includes their physical body), or state/county governments set aside public land. Private Conservation groups, which purchase land to preserve it, are very laudable and should be encouraged. The Federal government owns more than half of many western states and over 90% of at least one (Nevada). This is Tyranny. 

    Yet, for opposing these environmentalist groups, like everything else, Conservatives/Libertarians are demaguaged by these groups, the press and by about half of the population. We need more heroes like these four men to step up and take out country back. 
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

-Edward Abbey

Alaskans Wary of Vote on Oil Drilling (posted 3/17/05)

Alaskans Issue Wary Response to Senate Vote on Oil Drilling at Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Seventy-five percent of Alaskans told a February 2000 Dittman research survey that they wanted to open up the refuge for drilling, with only 23 percent opposed.

A 1995 Dittman survey yielded similar results, with 75 percent of Alaskans saying they backed ANWR drilling, and just 19 percent opposed.

In the Inupiat Eskimo villages near ANWR, support is even higher. A January 2000 survey in the village of Kaktovik found that 78 percent of residents back more energy exploration in their own backyard. Only 9 percent were opposed.

In 1995, the Alaska Federation of Natives, which represents 80,000 Eskimos, adopted a resolution supporting ANWR drilling, calling it a “critically important economic opportunity for Alaska natives.”

    More evidence comes from a previous post of mine (which in fact first alerted me that this AP story was fishy): 

Casting a Cold Eye on Arctic Oil
9/10/03 New York Times - Nicolas Kristof goes to Alaska to investigate ANWAR (Alaska National Wildlife Refuge) and offer his opinion on the Bush administration's proposal to open it to energy exploration (aka - oil drilling). A vast majority of Alaskans, both Democrats and Republicans, support the plan. Of course, Kristof opposes the drilling, but what is most interesting, besides the fact that only 7% of ANWAR would be open to drilling (and perhaps only a small percentage of this 'spoiled' by the drilling), is this statement in his story: It's also only fair to give special weight to the views of the only people who live in the coastal plain: the Inupiat Eskimos, who overwhelmingly favor drilling (they are poor now, and oil could make them millionaires). One of the Eskimos, Bert Akootchook, angrily told me that if environmentalists were so anxious about the Arctic, they should come here and clean up the petroleum that naturally seeps to the surface of the tundra. (all emphasis mine!)

    One final comment on this is from this story from Newsday: Interior Secretary Gale Norton said:

"This energy production would generate billions of dollars in revenue for the federal Treasury as well as the state of Alaska," she said.

    Why should the Federal Treasury get billions of dollars? Who are they taking it from, the people of Alaska, the natives, the US taxpayer, or the oil companies? 

'Hydrogen highway' bad route, group says
11/20/2004 Oakland Tribune - In a study that state environmental officials admit has some merit has thrown some cold water on Governor Schwarzenegger's much ballyhooed $75-200 million (partially taxpayer funded) 'California Hydrogen Highway Network' and on President Bush's bloated $1.2 billion Hydrogen Fuel Initiative. A Libertarians think tank has reported that unless the Hydrogen is produced by wind, water, or solar power (which is currently unlikely) it will pollute MORE then regular gas powered vehicles! Michele St. Martin, spokeswoman for the California Department of Environmental Protection counters that hydrogen is still an emerging science with rapid advances, and it is expected to be cheaper and more efficient in the future. She doesn't mention that gas powered vehicles are becoming more and more fuel efficient and will also continue to do so. In fact, in 2003, two scientists from USC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon came out with a paper published in the journal Science that argued: Improvements to current cars and current environmental rules are more than 100 times cheaper than hydrogen cars at reducing air pollution. And for several decades, the most cost-effective method to reduce oil imports and CO2 emissions from cars will be to increase fuel efficiency, the two scientists found. Further corroborating this line of thinking is an essay by ANOTHER Berkeley Scientist and a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle. But, rather then attack the arguments of the Libertarian study, a Sierra Club (environmental group) advisor said he is skeptical of findings by the Reason Foundation because of the group's ideological bias. I wonder if he would say the same about 2 Berkeley Professors? :)

Update 1/9/05 A slightly misleading piece in the Washington Post also claims: "No one has yet figured out how to generate large amounts of hydrogen without causing as much pollution as internal-combustion engines now create, or how to pay for a nationwide distribution network. And the vehicles are prohibitively expensive; if GM's Sequel were for sale, it would cost as much as a warehouse full of Corvettes. " This should read: "without causing more pollution".

Casting a Cold Eye on Arctic Oil
9/10/03 New York Times - Nicolas Kristof goes to Alaska to investigate ANWAR (Alaska National Wildlife Refuge) and offer his opinion on the Bush administration's proposal to open it to energy exploration (aka - oil drilling). A vast majority of Alaskans, both Democrats and Republicans, support the plan. Of course, Kristof opposes the drilling, but what is most interesting, besides the fact that only 7% of ANWAR would be open to drilling (and perhaps only a small percentage of this 'spoiled' by the drilling), is this statement in his story: It's also only fair to give special weight to the views of the only people who live in the coastal plain: the Inupiat Eskimos, who overwhelmingly favor drilling (they are poor now, and oil could make them millionaires). One of the Eskimos, Bert Akootchook, angrily told me that if environmentalists were so anxious about the Arctic, they should come here and clean up the petroleum that naturally seeps to the surface of the tundra. (all emphasis mine!)

'Pristine' Amazonian rainforests are changing and Massive growth of ecotourism worries biologists New Scientist March 2004

    Two 'doom and gloom' articles that show how science can be skewered just like the news. In the first story the focus is on how certain trees in the Amazon basin may be growing faster due to high levels of CO2 in the air. Despite the negativity sown throughout the article, there is no mention of the possibility that faster growing plant life might aid in keeping CO2 levels more stable! The book Oxygen by Nick Lane contains references to experiments resulting in faster/slower plant growth by varying atmospheric conditions. Obviously more research needs to be done, but this knee jerk negativity is puzzling. The second article is the most outrageous. What has helped the cause of conservationism more then ecotourism? The headline of this article should read 'Massive growth of ecotourism makes biologists euphoric'. Giving people a profit in something is the best way to motivate them to preserve it. The New Scientist finishes the article by quoting a scientist "The animals' welfare should be paramount because without them there will be no ecotourism." It is probably more accurate to say that without ecotourism there will be no animals! (in the future)

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