Russian scientist predicts global cooling

A Russian scientist predicts a period of global cooling in coming decades, followed by a warmer interval.

Khabibullo Abdusamatov expects a repeat of the period known as the Little Ice Age. During the 16th century, the Baltic Sea froze so hard that hotels were built on the ice for people crossing the sea in coaches.

The Little Ice Age is believed to have contributed to the end of the Norse colony in Greenland, which was founded during an interval of much warmer weather.

Abdusamatov and his colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences astronomical observatory said the prediction is based on measurement of solar emissions, Novosti reported. They expect the cooling to begin within a few years and to reach its peak between 2055 and 2060.

"The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times," he said. "The global temperature maximum has been reached on Earth, and Earth's global temperature will decline to a climatic minimum even without the Kyoto protocol."

NEWS ROUNDUP

Groundwater dispute heats up The Utah-Nevada dispute is heating up over groundwater in the Snake Valley, which Nevada wants to pump to Las Vegas. Next week, Utah legislators will travel to the western Utah region of Callao, Juab County, to meet with ranchers and environmentalists worried about what they see as a possible water grab by Nevada. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, residents of the region say they filed a petition with the Nevada Supreme Court challenging a rule that keeps some from asserting official protests against the project. The Nevada state rule says interested parties needed to file a protest at the time of the application for the groundwater, which was in 1989, to have standing now to make an official protest. Plaintiffs, which include the Great Basin and Utah chapters of Trout Unlimited and Defenders of Wildlife, say that violates their constitutional rights and isn't fair as many weren't aware of what was going on in 1989 and others who have water rights today did not own them 17 years ago. At issue is the "Clark, Lincoln and White Pine Counties Groundwater Development Project," which could pump up to about 176,000 acre-feet of underground water and pipe it to the Las Vegas area. Five aquifer basins are involved in the project. Two of interest to Utahns are the Snake Valley Project and the Spring Valley Project....
January salt water spill still being cleaned up Cleanup of a salt water spill estimated at nearly 1 million gallons continues more than six months after it was discovered in a creek in northwestern North Dakota. "We are probably about half completed with the surface work," said Keith Hill, an operations manager for Zenergy, Inc., of Tulsa, Okla. "Weather permitting, we should be able to finish surface-type work within two or three weeks," Hill said by phone Wednesday from Tulsa. "We've got most of the monitor wells in place, and monitoring will go on for several years." The spill from a pipeline break, discovered Jan. 4, sent salt water into Charbonneau Creek, a tributary of the Yellowstone River, killing fish and forcing ranchers to move their cattle. The clean up cost is estimated at around $2 million. Salt water is an oil production waste product that can kill plants and hurt animals. Oil companies pipe it underground to dispose of it. State Health Department officials say the January spill is the largest salt water spill they can remember in North Dakota....
U.S. has huge oil reserves - but there's a catch We have an energy problem. There’s no argument about it. Of course, the argument lies in how to fix it, whether it’s fixable at all, and when it can be fixed. On Colorado’s western slope, under the big sky, near a town called Meeker, quietly and often secretly, for decades scientists have been probing hundreds of feet into the Earth. They’re trying to extract what is believed to be the largest oil reserve in the world. More oil than in Saudi Arabia or Iraq. But, there’s just one problem: It’s trapped in rock called shale. With a barrel of crude selling at more than $70 dollars these days, Shell executives believe they can now produce oil form shale at a profit. The oil from shale is like any other oil. At Shell’s labs in Houston, scientists studying core samples say this could eventually turn into a conventional oil field – it just would take 100 million years. The oil is extracted by cooking it out of the ground. The unit used is an electric heater, and works like an old fashioned coffee percolator. At 650 to 700 degrees, the oil vaporizes and seeps through the rock. It flows to a well and then rises to the surface where it cools and liquefies. Too good to be true?....
Natural Gas Boom Impacts Rural Wyoming Town BETTY ANN BOWSER, NewsHour Correspondent: Every summer, the 1,600 residents of Pinedale, Wyoming, stage a three-day event called the Rendezvous. One of the highlights is a rodeo that celebrates the rich Western cow town heritage that residents, like Chopper and Lyn Grassell, say is changing too fast. LYN GRASSELL, Pinedale Resident: When we moved here, it was ranching. It was small. You knew everybody on the street. And now it's oil and gas. It's a lot of oil and gas. We were talking earlier. I think that there's a big push from the agricultural side to keep that, keep the kids knowing how to ride horses, and come to the rodeo, and experience all that. But then you have oil and gas that's coming in. It's just a whole new group of people. BETTY ANN BOWSER: The Green River Valley of Wyoming is in the middle of a natural gas boom. Pinedale, in rural Sublette County, is ground zero. It's where companies, like EnCana USA, have rushed to take advantage of the current energy crisis and have started a massive drilling operation in the Jonah Field, considered the richest natural gas deposit in the country. Paul Ulrich is EnCana's spokesman. PAUL ULRICH, EnCana Oil and Gas: We think we've got about 13.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas here in the Jonah Field. That's enough to heat America for about two-thirds of a year, you know, give or take a little bit, a lot of natural gas....
US to lease 8 million acres in Alaska for oil and gas drilling Despite strong opposition from environmental groups, the Bush administration yesterday said it would offer energy companies next month the opportunity to search for crude oil and natural gas on 8 million acres in Alaska's western Arctic region. The acres to be leased will be on 696 tracts in the northeast and northwest areas of the National Petroleum Reserve. Environmentalists are especially concerned because 373,000 acres north of the reserve's wetland-rich Teshekpuk Lake will be offered for lease for the first time. About 183,200 acres relinquished since a 2002 lease sale will also be offered again to energy companies. The Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, which will conduct the lease sale Sept. 27, said the reserve's energy supplies are needed and steps will be taken to limit the impact of drilling at biologically sensitive areas near Teshekpuk Lake. The reserve is estimated to hold between 5.9 billion and 13.2 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 39 trillion to 83 trillion cubic feet of natural gas....
Bow hunt sanctioned to solve bruin problem Bears have become such a nuisance in the Crystal Lakes community that residents are hoping hunters armed with bows and arrows will solve the problem. Up to 12 archers will be allowed to stalk bears on roughly 600 acres of greenbelt in the private mountain community located about 50 miles northwest of Fort Collins. It is the first time the state has approved a bear hunt in a private subdivision. Wildlife officials and many residents of Crystal Lakes say a regulated hunt is the only way to manage a massive influx of bears....
Who'll maintain the Beartooth? Suppose there were a road that nobody owned. And suppose the money to keep up that road had run out. That might be fine if it were a road to nowhere. But the Beartooth Highway, an acclaimed ribbon of pavement over the mountains on the Montana and Wyoming border, just happens to lead to Yellowstone National Park. With the spring 2007 opening of the spellbinding road just nine months away, there are questions about who will foot the bill to scrape it clear of snow and prepare it for the flocks of summer tourists. For decades -- because of peculiar circumstances dating back even longer -- crews from Yellowstone have plowed and maintained most of the road. Park officials, though, say they've run out of money to maintain that stretch. They say they could continue to pay for it but would have to make cuts to the park's budget to do so. Instead, park officials and others are trying to work with local communities to come up with other funding ideas....
A Man, a Plan, a Dam. Then, an F.B.I. Call On July 25, Jim Bensman of Alton, Ill., attended a public meeting on the proposed construction of a bypass channel for fish at a dam on the Mississippi River. Less than a week later, he was under investigation by the F.B.I. — the victim, depending on how you look at it, of either a comedy of errors or alarming antiterror zeal. The meeting was organized by the Army Corps of Engineers, which maintains Mississippi River navigation systems, including the Melvin Price Lock and Dam in East Alton, Ill., where it is considering construction of a fish passage. At the meeting, Mr. Bensman, a coordinator with Heartwood, an environmental organization, suggested the corps simply destroy the dam. It was an idea the corps itself had considered. In fact, a photograph of an exploding dam was included in the corps’ PowerPoint presentation, explosive demolition being by far the most common method of dam removal. But news accounts of the hearing did not put it quite like that. One newspaper said simply that he “would like to see the dam blown up.”....
Volunteers repair damage to the nation's only known Sasquatch trap Dave Enge and Jeff LaLande figure they are following in some mighty big footsteps. They point to the hefty 12-inch wide and two-inch thick planks that form the ceiling, floor and four sides. Then there's the heavy expanded metal grate and telephone poles that anchor the 10-foot by 10-foot wooden cage to the ground. "I don't know how they carried them up here," LaLande observed. "Back in the days when they built this, it was still fairly remote. You had to hike all the way up from the Applegate River at that point." Perhaps, it went unsaid, the builders of the legendary Bigfoot trap in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest had a little help from a large hairy fellow. Despite the fort-like strength its 1974 builders apparently felt was necessary to nab the elusive Sasquatch, age has taken its toll. The floor planks have nearly rotted through and rot has punched a hole through one side....
Volcanic Destruction Of United States Is 40,000 Years Overdue! Such an event has happened in North America not once, but three times in a place you normally wouldn’t think of as a hotbed of volcanic activity. This particular renowned and famous tourist destination has a little-known periodic feature that is more deadly than Old Faithful and is ominously about 40,000 years behind schedule. Of the three most massive volcanic eruptions in our continent’s geological history, Yellowstone National Park holds the first and second place records. The Long Valley California caldera comes in at number three. Yellowstone so far has had two mega-destructive events — 2 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago and a smaller one (for the sake of comparison, not severity) 600,000 years ago. The area around, beneath and within our nation’s first national park is known in scientific circles as a “Super Volcano” and there’s a good reason for all that magnificent mountain scenery. Approximately two million years ago the first Yellowstone blast left a crater that has been estimated at 49.8 miles long by 40.5 miles wide. Geological records reveal a ballpark figure of the output of that eruption at 585 cubic miles of molten magma. According to geologists, our pleasant little nature and wildlife preserve has an average cycle of caldera-building eruptions of about every 600,000 years — and the last one was 640,000 years ago. That one produced a crater measuring 53 miles long by 28 miles wide. The resulting pyroclastic flow deposited enough material to cover 3000 square miles, settling into a rock layer known as the Lava Creek Tuff, a volume, if rolled out evenly, that would equal covering the entire continental United States with five inches of asphalt....This will never happen. After all, it would be in violation of the ESA, CWA, CAA & NEPA.
Climate linked to plague increase Climatic changes could lead to more outbreaks of bubonic plague among human populations, a study suggests. Researchers found that the bacterium that caused the deadly disease became more widespread following warmer springs and wetter summers. The disease occurs naturally in many parts of the world, and the team hopes its findings will help officials limit the risk of future outbreaks. The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The bacterium Yersinia pestis is believed to have triggered the Black Death that killed more than 20 million people in the Middle Ages....
Willie Nelson Joins Protest Against Slaughtering Wild Horses "If you’ve ever been around horses a lot, especially wild horses, you know they are part of the American heritage," Willie Nelson says. "I don’t think it’s right that we kill them and eat them." Nelson’s comments were in support of a news release this week where Nelson urges participation in a September 5 rally planned in Washington, where people will gather to support a bill sponsored by Rep. John Sweeney that aims to end the horse slaughters. Nelson himself can’t attend the rally, but his daughter Amy will, along with other celebrities including Jennifer Pryor, wife of the late Richard Pryor, and actress Bo Derek, who regularly campaigns on behalf of animal rights. Nelson has owned horses for many years and has several buried on his ranches. "I do have a lot of respect for my horses," Nelson said, which explains his passion about supporting the bill that will ban the slaughters. The U.S. House is scheduled to vote on the bill, HR 503, on September 7....
Arizona ballot initiative challenges livestock-raising techniques Several Arizona farm and ranch organizations have formed a coalition to defeat an out-of-state animal activists-supported initiative headed for the Arizona General Election ballot on Nov. 7. If passed by voters, Arizona hog and veal producers would be required by law to increase stall sizes for hogs and veal calves. Currently no veal industry exist in the state. Under the initiative called Proposition (Prop) 204, hog and veal producers who fail to make the changes could face up to six months in prison and a $20,000 fine if the proposal passes. Prop 204 was launched by the out-of-state groups Farm Sanctuary and the Humane Society of the United States. “Just plain and simple - the proposal is hogwash,” said Jim Klinker, chair of the agriculture-based Coalition for Arizona Farmers and Ranchers (CAFR) that developed the simplistic ‘hogwash’ message. The coalition consists of the Arizona Pork Council, Arizona Cattlemen’s Association, United Dairymen of Arizona and the Arizona Farm Bureau. Klinker is Farm Bureau’s executive secretary. Klinker said the issue is not about stall size. Arizona hogs are raised humanely in a safe, clean environment and are fed a nutritious diet of corn, soybeans and supplements. The real issue is about out-of-state animal activists trying to force their anti-meat, pro-vegetarian and pro-vegan lifestyle on every Arizonan, he noted. The activists’ goal is to knock off the small hog-producing states like Arizona and Florida and work to derail hog and veal production in larger livestock production states, said Klinker....
USDA's Johanns Urges Broad Support Of Animal ID System Speaking at the National Institute of Animal Agriculture's Animal Identification/Information Exposition 2006 in Kansas City, Mo., Wednesday, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns encouraged participants to continue working toward full participation in a national, voluntary system of animal identification. "Don't let naysayers dampen your enthusiasm," Johanns said in a speech to the group. Other countries have animal-identification systems, and they are using the fact that their livestock are traceable as a marketing tool, Johanns said. The U.S. also should have a system for tracing livestock to stay competitive. The USDA is listening to market concerns and is addressing them all through a campaign of education about what the system is and is not, Johanns said. During his presentation, a question-and-answer session and a press conference, Johanns addressed issues of effectiveness, cost and confidentiality. He defended the USDA's stance on turning over the database program to private industry, saying it provided a competitive environment to keep the costs down. Johanns also said a privately grown system will produce the best system, one that meets the needs of producers and attracts them to the program....
Arlen Lancaster Succeeds Bruce Knight as NRCS Top Man Arlen Lancaster has been selected as the new Chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Lancaster succeeds Bruce Knight at NRCS, who was recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate as under secretary of agriculture for marketing and regulatory programs. "Arlen Lancaster's dedication, leadership and experience has well prepared him to serve in this new leadership role on our USDA team," says Ag Secretary Mike Johanns. "He has a passion for conservation and I look forward to working with Arlen in this new capacity. I'm very confident that our nation's farmers and ranchers will have a strong advocate in him for improving the quality of our natural resources and conserving our land." Lancaster has served as deputy assistant secretary of Congressional Relations at USDA since April 2005. Prior to his service at USDA, Lancaster served in various senior staff positions in Congress, having worked since 1999 for Senator Mike Crapo, as a senior policy advisor and as the staff director for the Senate Subcommittee on Forestry, Conservation, and Rural Revitalization since 2001, he played a key role in crafting the conservation title of the 2002 Farm Bill. He also worked for Senator Robert Bennett from 1998 to 1999....
Gillett forms new natural meat firm Vail businessman George Gillett Jr. has combined two of his investment groups to create a natural meat company with more than $500 million in annual revenue. Golden-based BC Natural Foods, parent of Coleman Natural Meats, merged with KDSB Holdings and its Kings Delight and Snow Ball Foods brands to form Coleman Natural Foods LLC, the company said Wednesday. "It is taking on (the Coleman) name because that (name) has the greatest consumer awareness," said Chief Executive Officer George Chivari. Headquarters will remain in Golden. The combined company will employ 2,300 people at 17 facilities in six states and produce meats under several brands, including Coleman, Petaluma Poultry, Kings Delight and Snow Ball Foods. The company has about 300 workers at three Colorado facilities, said spokeswoman Robyn Nick. Chivari will continue to head the larger company, and Mel Coleman Jr. will remain as chairman of the board. Coleman's father, a Colorado cattle rancher who helped pioneer standards for natural and organic beef, founded the company that bears his name. Mel Coleman Sr. died in 2002, but the ranch is still in the family and is one of about 500 ranches that supply cattle to the company, Chivari said....
County rancher finds surprise visitor in backyard Ken Miller has lived on a ranch north of Fort Lupton for 50 years. He knows a thing or two about snakes. “I see bull snakes and water snakes all the time,” he said. But not even Miller was prepared for what he found lounging in his grass a couple Saturdays ago. “Animal control tells us it was a red-tailed boa and they’re native to Central and South America,” he said. Miller said he was watering his lawn when they came across the creature. “At first we didn’t even realize it was a snake, looked closely and it was,” he said. Pat Mallet, who cares for Miller’s elderly mother, at first thought the snake, estimated at about 6 ½ feet long by an animal control officer, was a fallen tree branch....

Lots of good news out there folks. Let's just hope they catch Sasquatch before he gets blown to smithereens by a volcano or dies of the plague. And oh yes, don't mess around with the Corps of Engineers.

MAD COW DISEASE

Canada confirms another case of mad cow

Canada confirmed mad cow disease in an animal on an Alberta farm Wednesday, the country's eighth case of a terminal ailment that has roiled its livestock industry. The latest case was found in a dairy cow between eight and 10 years of age, Canada's Food Inspection Agency said. The agency says exposure to the terminal disease likely occurred before or during the introduction of new feed regulations that were supposed to stop the spread of the disease. Last month, the U.S. suspended plans to increase imports of beef and cattle from Canada over concerns about an infected cow born in 2002, five years after Canada enacted safeguards against mad cow disease. George Luterbach, an animal scientist with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, said the latest cases should not have any repercussions with trading partners. "These cases are the result of a very robust surveillance program," Luterbach said. "These cases are very few and far between." Having tested 60,000 cattle last year, Luterbach said the agency is confident that mad cow is not a common in Canada or something that is growing. The Canadian Cattlemen's Association estimated its 90,000 members had lost more than $5.6 billion since 2003....

Latest Canada mad cow won't hurt US trade: USDA

Canada's latest case of mad cow disease will not affect its beef trade relations with the United States, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said on Wednesday. "I do not anticipate that this will change our trading relationship with Canada at all," Johanns told Reuters in a telephone interview. "Currently beef coming into the United States (from Canada) is from animals under 30 months old. There just isn't a risk there." The animal is Canada's eighth case of the disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), since the first native-born case in 2003. Johanns noted that while current trade would be unaffected, Washington had postponed plans to broaden imports from Canada to include beef products from animals older than 30 months....

U.S. Beef Still a Tough Sell in Wary Japan

It's been weeks since Japan ditched its import ban on U.S. beef and the first shipment went on sale, but American beef is nowhere to be seen at supermarkets here — except this nation's five Costco stores. Many Japanese are worried about the safety of U.S. beef, and retailers here say they aren't about to waste their time carrying an unpopular product. Instead, meat-section shelves are filled with domestic beef and cuts from Australia. Japan was once the top destination for U.S. beef, importing $1.4 billion worth a year. But that was before Tokyo's decision in December 2003 to ban American beef imports after the first reported case of mad cow disease in the U.S. The ban on American beef was eased in December 2005 but imposed again in January after prohibited spinal bones were found in a veal shipment — an error by U.S. plant workers and a government inspector who didn't realize that veal cuts with backbone, allowed in the U.S., were considered a risk for mad cow disease in Japan. That error was crucial, making consumers even more suspicious of U.S. meat. Kaori Watanabe, spokeswoman for Aeon Co., said the nation's top supermarket chain hadn't received a single call from customers asking for American beef. Aeon, which operates more than 300 food stores nationwide, often is deluged with requests for products, so that means there's no interest in American beef, she said....

NEWS ROUNDUP

Ag Secretary: Burns 'very unfair' in attack on firefighters Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said Tuesday a verbal attack by U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., on federal firefighters for their work in quelling a Montana wildfire was unfair, adding that he was proud of the job being done by the 10,000 U.S. Forest Service firefighters he oversees. Johanns' comments came while visiting the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, which manages 15,000 firefighters from five federal agencies, including the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. "To be quite candid, I think it's very unfair to the firefighters," Johanns said of Burns' comments. Johanns praised them for their determination in dangerous situations _ such as an Aug. 13 helicopter crash near Yellow Pine, Idaho, that killed four people, including three firefighters from the Payette National Forest. "It's been a tough season, from a number of standpoints," he added. "But that loss of life makes it especially difficult."....I'll bet Johanns gets a nice little call from the White House about his comments.
Endangered wolf pup dies in the wild An endangered Mexican gray wolf pup that was released into the wild with its parents earlier this summer has died, according to officials with the wolf reintroduction program. The male pup, a member of the Meridian Pack, was released in Arizona in June. Officials said it was with its parents on July 14, but evidence was found days later that it was dead. Other members of the pack injured a dog later in July and were hazed by the program field team to keep them away from homes. Officials reported two other depredation cases in July. A male wolf, probably from the Granite Pack, killed a calf in New Mexico and two Luna Pack yearlings were blamed for another depredation....
Fire plan tossed out at Sequoia monument A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a U.S. Forest Service management plan to use commercial logging to reduce fire danger in the Giant Sequoia National Monument. Ruling on a lawsuit filed last year by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer found the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Protection Act by not adequately analyzing the impacts of logging in the monument east of Fresno. "This is an across-the-board victory for one of the most treasured natural resources on the planet," said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Lockyer. Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathes saw things differently "We are very disappointed by the ruling," he said. "We spent almost four years developing a plan that meets the spirit and intent of President Clinton's proclamation," which created the monument in 2000. In a related ruling Tuesday, Judge Breyer also ruled in favor of six environmental groups that had sued the Forest Service over four timber sales in the region, three of them in the monument. Breyer halted the sales -- which had been signed prior to Clinton's proclamation but never actually acted on -- saying the agency failed to consider new information about the potential impacts on a rare weasel-like mammal, the Pacific fisher....
Navajo AG: Tribes must have final say in right-of-way issues The Energy Policy Act of 2005, Section 368, requires the U.S. Department of Energy and other federal agencies designate new right-of-way corridors for energy development on federal lands. Section 1813 of the act requires a federal study of energy rights-of-way across Indian lands. That study also includes an accompanying report on 1948-2006 historic rates of compensation for rights-of-way crossing Indian lands. In comments submitted to the feds earlier this year on behalf of the Navajo Nation, Attorney General Louis Denetsosie said it is well known that the right-of-way compensation dispute between El Paso Natural Gas and the Navajo Nation prompted the Section 1813 study. Initially, New Mexico Oil and Gas Association and El Paso proposed that Congress amend the 1948 Indian right-of-way statute to permit the Secretary of the Interior to grant rights-of-way for tribal lands over the objections of the tribe. Congress refused to do this, and instead directed the Section 1813 study be conducted....
Military pitches in to battle wildfires Wildfires raging nationwide have prompted the first military firefighting deployment in three years. Forty-nine large fires, covering 773,000 acres, are burning in 12 states. With all civilian fire teams deployed, the National Interagency Fire Center sought help from the Pentagon, which sent an Army battalion of 550 soldiers from Fort Lewis, Wash., last week to fight the Tripod Complex fire in northern Washington. The unit was deployed by Northern Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. As of Monday, the 116,000-acre Tripod Complex fire in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest 7 miles north of Winthrop was 30 percent contained. This year, 77,176 fires have scorched 6,804,464 acres - the most for this time of year since at least 2000....
New outlaws plague Arizona desert refuges Roger Di Rosa, standing atop a high ridge overlooking a broad basin and the Growler Mountains beyond, recalls what this protected area was like nearly 30 years ago when he did his first tour here in the Southwest's Sonoran Desert. "You could go out and not see another person for a week," says Di Rosa, who now manages the sprawling U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuge that covers an area the size of Rhode Island. There's no longer a shortage of people here or on other federal land that makes up 43% of the 1,900-mile boundary with Mexico. Aggressive crackdowns along the border in recent years in places such as San Diego and El Paso have pushed illegal immigrants and drug smugglers into remote desert areas in southern Arizona. As a result, employees from park rangers to biologists are dealing more with the effects of illegal immigration, instead of protecting wildlife and helping visitors. Last year, 205,231 illegal immigrants were apprehended on Arizona border lands managed by the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management, according to Di Rosa....
Mineral Basin mine cleanup ready for finishing touches They make for a collection of strange bedfellows. But together, they are about to accomplish something unprecedented. A conservation group, a jewelry company, a ski resort and the federal government have pooled their resources to reclaim an abandoned hard-rock mine complex in Mineral Basin that has been leaking heavy metals into the canyon watershed for decades. The project, which began in 2004, is now in its final stages. The news medias were invited to take a look at the nearly finished effort on Tuesday....
Nevada woman dies in fall at Zion National Park A Las Vegas woman died Tuesday after falling several hundred feet from the popular Angels Landing trail in Zion National Park in southern Utah, a park spokesman said. The body of Bernadette Vandermeer, 29, was found by search and rescue crews, said Chief Deputy Rob Tersigni of the Washington County sheriff's office. The sheriff's office and park police received an emergency call reporting the fall early Tuesday, said Tom Haraden, a Zion National Park spokesman. "A gentleman was with his wife and she had fallen from Angels Landing," Haraden said. Search and rescue teams and a helicopter were dispatched to find the woman, who was dead at the scene, he said....
Cat-killing raccoons on prowl in west Olympia Raccoons are cute, until they kill one of your cats. That is what a west Olympia neighborhood is learning this summer. Raccoons have killed about 10 cats in a three-block area near the Garfield Nature Trail at Harrison Avenue West and Foote Street Southwest. Problem wildlife coordinator Sean Carrell of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife called the situation "bizarre, weird." "I've never heard a report of 10 cats being killed. It's something we're going to have to monitor," he said. He added that they may have to bring in trappers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The problem got so bad that residents Kari Hall and Tamara Keeton even started a Raccoon Watch after having an emotional neighborhood meeting attended by about 40 people....

FLE

Judge Taylor's Tapped-Out Argument

When President George Bush confidently told reporters Friday that a district court judge's ruling against his administration's secret wiretap program would be overturned, he wasn't just spinning. There is a good chance he is right. As much as it might pain those looking for something, anything, to use against the Bush administration's ever-increasing definition of executive power, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's opinion probably ain't it. There is a reason the Justice Department rushed to appeal this decision. "There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution," Taylor wrote in her decision, a much-needed attempt at some executive-bashing rhetoric. It sounds to these ears like a conscious callback to the debates on the Constitution itself, when the fear of an untamed despot was palpable. But as part of a legal opinion? Not so much. It isn't just the decision's language that falls short. As Eugene Volokh and his merry band of bloggers have teased out, the underpinnings of the relatively terse 43-page decision are weak or confused. It turns out that the National Security Agency's program violates the First Amendment only because it violates the Fourth Amendment. In essence, Judge Taylor agrees with the Justice Department that citizens have no constitutional right to private conversations, that the government can always listen in provided it has a good enough reason. So then the primary question is down to the "reasonableness" of the NSA program. And what does Judge Taylor say? Why, she says the program "obviously" violates the Fourth Amendment and moves on. An appeals court is going to be all over that move like Ft. Meade on a cell call to Islamabad....

Conflict of Interest Is Raised in N.S.A. Ruling

The federal judge who ruled last week that President Bush’s eavesdropping program was unconstitutional is a trustee and an officer of a group that has given at least $125,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan, a watchdog group said Tuesday. The group, Judicial Watch, a conservative organization here that found the connection, said the link posed a possible conflict for the judge, Anna Taylor Diggs, and called for further investigation. “The system relies on judges to exercise good judgment, and we need more information and more explanation about what the court’s involvement was in support of the A.C.L.U.,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which gained attention in the 1990’s for ethics accusations against President Bill Clinton. Three legal ethicists interviewed said although Judge Taylor’s role as a trustee for a supporter of the civil liberties group would not necessarily disqualify her from hearing the case, she should have probably disclosed the connection in court to avoid any appearance of a conflict. “It certainly would have been prudent” to notify the parties in the case, including the Justice Department, about the issue, said Steven Lubet, a law professor at Northwestern University and an author of “Judicial Conduct and Ethics.”....

Feds Sue to Block Release of Records

Federal prosecutors sued state utility regulators and Verizon Communications Inc. on Monday to block the release of information related to the government's domestic surveillance program. The Public Utilities Commission on Aug. 9 ordered Verizon to provide a sworn statement about the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program. The PUC was reacting to alleged privacy law violations. Complying with the order would "place Verizon in a position of having to confirm or deny the existence of information that cannot be confirmed or denied without causing exceptionally grave harm to national security," the suit says. Commission spokesman Phil Lindley did not return a message Monday. In May, Verizon said it would not discuss any relationship with the NSA program, but denied reports that it had provided customer call data or records. The Justice Department has also sued to prevent disclosure of similar confidential information in New Jersey and Missouri.

Donation will allow Minutemen to erect high-tech border fence

A Washington-based company is donating up to $7 million worth of fiber-optic security fencing material for the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps to use in any new barriers the group erects to try to keep illegal immigrants out of Arizona. The mesh has embedded sensors that can differentiate between human and animal contact and conditions such as high winds or heavy rain. Tied into cameras and alarms, the system can alert monitors to the precise location of any intrusion. "We're certainly not against immigration," said Nina May, the head of FOMGuard USA, which is donating the material. "We're against illegal immigration, because there are standards to follow. Too many people stand in line for years, and it's not fair to them." May said the mesh security fencing was designed for use along the demilitarized zone with North Korea. The system pushes infrared light pulses continuously through the fiber-optic wire mesh, which is called FOM, for Fiber Optic Mesh. It can use the pulsing light to detect if the mesh is stretched or cut and what is pushing or pulling at its strands....

Texas Sheriffs: Terrorists Entering U.S. from Mexico

The chief law enforcement officers of several Texas counties along the southern U.S. border warn that Arabic-speaking individuals are learning Spanish and integrating into Mexican culture before paying smugglers to sneak them into the United States. The Texas Sheriffs' Border Coalition believes those individuals are likely terrorists and that drug cartels and some members of the Mexican military are helping them get across the border. Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez of Zapata County, Texas told Cybercast News Service that Iranian currency, military badges in Arabic, jackets and other clothing are among the items that have been discovered along the banks of the Rio Grande River. The sheriff also said there are a substantial number of individuals crossing the southern border into the U.S. who are not Mexican. He described the individuals in question as well-funded and able to pay so-called "coyotes" - human smugglers - large sums of money for help gaining illegal entry into the U.S. Although many of the non-Mexican illegal aliens are fluent in Spanish, Gonzalez said they speak with an accent that is not native....

Legislators seek review of border agents' conviction

Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have asked for congressional hearings and reviews by the White House and Justice Department into the conviction of two U.S. Border Patrol agents who shot and wounded a fleeing drug suspect. The agents, convicted by a federal jury in El Paso in March, face 20 years in prison at a sentencing hearing next month. "It appears the facts do not add up or justify the length of the sentences for these agents, let alone their conviction on multiple counts," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat. "Border Patrol agents have a difficult and often dangerous job in guarding our nation's borders. "Undue prosecution of Border Patrol agents could have a chilling effect on their ability to carry out their duties," Mrs. Feinstein said in a letter Monday to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, requesting a full hearing into the matter. She asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales last week to investigate the case. The U.S. attorney's office in El Paso, which reports to the Justice Department, prosecuted the two agents. In a letter to President Bush, Rep. Walter B. Jones, North Carolina Republican, asked the White House to review the case, saying the prosecution was "outrageous." He said it did nothing but "tie the hands of the Border Patrol and prevent the agency from securing America against a flood of illegal immigrants, drugs, counterfeit goods and, quite possibly, terrorists."....

Mexican nature park offers mock illegal border crossing

On a misty, moonless night, the group scurried down the canyon wall, their feet slipping in the ankle-high mud. The sirens grew louder as their guide, clad in a ski mask and known only as Poncho, urged them to run faster. "Hurry up! The Border Patrol is coming!" A couple in matching designer tennis outfits loped awkwardly along, the boyfriend clutching a digital video camera and struggling to keep the pop-out screen steady. The 20 or so people fleeing the Border Patrol aren't undocumented immigrants - they're tourists about 700 miles from the border. Most are well-heeled professionals more likely to travel to the United States in an airplane than on foot. They've each paid 150 pesos - about $15 - for what is perhaps Mexico's strangest tourist attraction: A night as an illegal immigrant crossing the Rio Grande. Advertising for the mock journey, which takes place at a nature park in the central state of Hidalgo, tells the pretend immigrants to "Make fun of the Border Patrol!" and to "Cross the Border as an Extreme Sport!"....

When a President Betrays His Country

Recent papers released from the Clinton Presidential Library reveal a well-orchestrated and clearly defined roadmap to impose severe restrictions on firearm owners, manufacturers, and dealers. Perhaps the most sinister is the deliberate attempt to financially cripple firearm manufacturers and dealers via class action lawsuits. In an effort to mimic the lawsuits levied against tobacco companies, the Clinton Administration appears to have had direct involvement in its support and furthering of such lawsuits. Of course, the major difference between tobacco and firearms is that firearms save an estimated 2.5 million lives year, whereas tobacco is not reported to save any lives whatsoever. Clearly the benefit of owning a firearm far outweighs any possible risk of owning one. A draft press release from the "Center to Prevent Handgun Violence" (a.k.a. "Brady Campaign", a.k.a. "Handgun Control") along with numerous talking points that appear to be right out of the "Brady Campaign" playbook are also included in the recently released documents. One might be inclined to wonder whether or not the "Brady Campaign" was working out of the President's office. Mandatory licensing of gun owners, regular cross-checking of gun owners against the criminal databases, "smart gun" technology, a ban on private party transfers (a.k.a. "gun show loophole"), mandatory child safety locks, and a ban on the importation of semi-automatic magazines that hold more than ten rounds (a.k.a. "high capacity clips [sic]") are just a few of the highlights of the Clinton plan....

NEWS ROUNDUP

Fixing the ozone hole slows efforts on global warming When more than two dozen countries undertook in 1989 to fix the ozone hole over Antarctica, they began replacing chloroflourocarbons in refrigerators, air conditioners and hair spray. But they had little idea that using other gases that contain chlorine or fluorine instead also would contribute greatly to global warming. CFCs destroy ozone, the atmospheric layer that helps protect against the sun's most harmful rays, and trap the earth's heat, contributing to a rise in average surface temperatures. In theory, the ban should have helped both problems. But the countries that first signed the Montreal Protocol 17 years ago failed to recognize that CFC users would seek out the cheapest available alternative. The chemicals that replaced CFCs are better for the ozone layer, but do little to help global warming. These chemicals, too, act as a reflective layer in the atmosphere that traps heat like a greenhouse....
Legislative Victory For Land Conservation New land conservation tax benefits for family farmers and ranchers are included in recent pension reform legislation. The new law will combine an adjusted tax incentive for land conservation with common sense reforms to ensure the public benefit of conservation donations. “This law will help landowners and land trusts protect important lands across America,” said Land Trust Alliance President Rand Wentworth. The new law extends the carry-forward period for tax deductions for voluntary conservation agreements from 5 to 15 years and raises the cap on those deductions from 30 percent of a donor’s adjusted gross income to 50 percent and to 100 percent for qualifying farmers and ranchers. This allows ranchers, farmers and other modest-income landowners to get a much larger benefit for donating very valuable development rights to their land....
Scientists: Buffelgrass a threat Scientists from the Desert Laboratory issued a call to arms on Tuesday, telling Pima County it must spend millions to eradicate buffelgrass or face the "unhinging" of the Sonoran Desert ecosystem. Julio Betancourt, a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, painted a bleak picture in his presentation to the Pima County Board of Supervisors. The African grass, imported by cattle ranchers in the early 20th century, spreads prolifically, especially along roadways. It has fueled destructive fires in recent years in a landscape that's not fire-adapted. Betancourt said buffelgrass has taken over as much as a third of the desert in Sonora and is spreading rapidly in Pima County. It threatens the open space purchased by the county under recent bond programs, as well as homes in the Foothills. Fed by the heavy rains, the grass is responsible for the verdant hillsides more typical of Ireland than Southern Arizona. But when the monsoon rains recede, it could be fuel for next year's fires. Betancourt predicted an erosion of tourist revenues and property values within 20 years as saguaros and palo verdes give way to the grass, which the state deemed a noxious weed last year....
Cabin woes Officials have proposed renewing special-use permits for standing cabins in the San Gabriel Mountains, but delayed a decision for cabins burned in the Curve and Williams fires nearly four years ago. For the 465 cabins in 18 recreation residence tracts throughout the Angeles National Forest, the wait should be over by the end of the year. Others remain in limbo. A July 31 letter from Forest Supervisor Jody Noiron to cabin owners stated an environmental analysis would be done on the impact of issuing 20-year permits for cabins. It also stated they were proposing renewing the 465 permits on those expiring Dec. 31, 2008. Those in limbo include the cabin owners in about 60,000acres scorched north of Azusa to north of Claremont during two fires in September 2002....
Federal officials refuse to restrict off-road use In the latest wrangling over the Southern California desert's most popular off-roading area, federal wildlife officials decided against protecting 16 insects that live among the wind-carved dunes. Environmental groups said Monday they likely would challenge the decision, and riding enthusiasts said they were relieved. Grant George, who owns a dune-buggy shop in Rialto, said he feared that if the jewel beetles, sand wasps and velvet ants had received protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, it could have lead to further restrictions at the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area. It was an attempt to "use the Endangered Species Act as a tool to close public land, and we're pleased the federal government made a sound, scientific analysis," said George, who is president of the American Sand Association, which has been active in keeping the dunes open for riding....
Gila's Standing Trout Unlimited (TU) recently criticized the decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to downlist Gila trout from endangered to threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This action moves this rare species one step closer to being removed altogether from the endangered species list. "The Fish and Wildlife Service has failed to meet its own criteria for downlisting," said Bill Schudlich, Chair of the TU New Mexico Council. "One of the most important criteria is the protection and replication of the four pure lineages of Gila trout. To date, not all of the lineages have been replicated." "Given the fact that Fish and Wildlife does not meet the objectives identified in its own recovery plan, we cannot understand why it has taken such a step at this time," added Schudlich....
Desert Connections Yet the valley — an hour northeast of Las Vegas — is on its way to becoming a real estate development of historic proportions, with as many as 159,000 homes, 16 golf courses and a full complement of stores and service facilities. At nearly 43,000 acres, Coyote Springs covers almost twice as much space as the next-largest development in a state famous for outsized building projects. Helping make Coyote Springs come alive was an alliance between a multimillionaire developer and one of the highest-ranking members of Congress: Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader and a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.
Over the last four years, Reid has used his influence in Washington to help the developer, Nevada super-lobbyist Whittemore, clear obstacles from Coyote Springs' path. As the project advanced, Reid received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Whittemore. The contributions not only went to Reid's Senate campaigns, but also to his leadership fund, which he used to help bankroll the campaigns of Democratic colleagues. Whittemore also helped advance the legal careers of two of Reid's four sons. One of the two, Leif Reid, who is Whittemore's personal lawyer, has represented the developer throughout the Coyote Springs project, including in negotiations with federal officials....
Editorial: Plight of Preble's tells a larger story The Preble's meadow jumping mouse has hopped back into an endangered species debate as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service nears a final decision on the rodent's status. The future of this small creature has been embroiled in years of controversy as experts and advocates considered whether it meets U.S. standards for habitat protection. The Preble's was placed on the endangered species list in May 1998, and its status has been under review ever since. The logic of devoting years of research to a 3-inch rodent - 9 inches if you count its tail - can be difficult to grasp, but the issue raises important questions about preserving Colorado species from the threats of development. The Preble's is threatened by residential, commercial and agricultural development. The battleground is 31,000 acres now off-limits to development to protect the species....
D.C. insider named to head Utah's BLM Bureau of Land Management Chief of Staff Selma Sierra, a Westerner who has spent most of her career in Washington, will head the agency's Utah office. The newly named director will inherit some of the most bitterly fought land management issues in the West, including identifying and preserving wilderness characteristics, refereeing disputes over ownership of roads across federal land, and expanding energy production, including development of oil shale. The Utah BLM office manages 22.9 million surface acres, another 12.3 million acres of subsurface mineral rights, and 2.3 million acres of tribal lands. A New Mexico native, Sierra worked in the Interior Department during President George H.W. Bush's administration before going to work as a deputy press secretary for the House Ways and Means Committee and then press secretary for New Mexico Rep. Joe Skeen. She worked two years at the Commerce Department before joining BLM as assistant director of communications and then, last year, was named chief of staff....
Park service recommends killing deer Despite the impassioned pleas of local animal rights groups, more than a 1,000 non-native deer would be shot and killed at Point Reyes National Seashore if a new plan endorsed Monday by the National Park Service goes forward. The park service would donate the animals' meat and hides to nonprofit or charity organizations. A California condor recovery program and soup kitchens have expressed an interest in the meat, and American Indian groups are interested in the pelts. A final environmental impact statement released by the National Park Service Monday recommends 1,350 deer (800 axis and 550 fallow) be killed over 15 years by park service staff or contractors trained in wildlife sharpshooting. The impact statement also recommends that the park service seek approval to use experimental contraceptives on 100 to 150 fallow does, which would be allowed to live. These drugs are not thought to be effective with axis does. There is no drug registered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for contraception in deer....
Judge is asked to lift fish ladder demands Using a new provision of federal energy law for the first time, PacifiCorp is asking a judge to let it off the hook on building fish ladders to help salmon over four Klamath River hydroelectric dams. A weeklong trial began Monday before a federal administrative law judge in Sacramento, Calif., and a ruling is expected next month that promises to be a key factor in whether the Portland-based utility decides to keep operating the dams, which are blamed by fishermen, American Indian tribes and conservation groups for contributing to declining salmon returns to the Klamath River in Northern California. Three straight years of low returns of wild chinook to the Klamath led federal fisheries managers this summer to shut down most commercial salmon fishing along 700 miles of California and Oregon coastline. The Commerce Department has estimated the catch this year will be just 16 percent of average, with direct losses of $16 million to the 1,500 fishermen in the area. Administrative Law Judge Parlen McKenna will decide whether federal agencies were justified in prescribing that as a condition of getting a new operating license for the dams, PacifiCorp build fish ladders over them, install fish screens on turbines and leave more water in the river, rather than running it through turbines....
Farmers fight for their water on Front Range Dan Wacker misses the crops that once covered his 80-acre farm, the ones that have withered and died since the state turned off his wells. He wants his water back. Nina Guthrie was forced to sell her farm and she wants the state to pay for her loss. The two were among about 100 farmers and their wives, some of them nearing bankruptcy, who gathered to find out what they could do after the state shut down hundreds of wells on the Eastern Plains because Front Range communities and farmers with senior water rights claimed the most precious resource in the West. The news this night was grim. The farmers were told they need to accept the fact they won't get their water back and the only satisfaction they're going to get is if they sue the state. "If you think you're going to file a takings case and get water, you're confused," said Chuck Miller, a property rights activist. He urged the farmers to form coalitions and file lawsuits....
Greenland's glaciers have been shrinking for 100 years: study Greenland's glaciers have been shrinking for the past century, according to a Danish study, suggesting that the ice melt is not a recent phenomenon caused by global warming. Danish researchers from Aarhus University studied glaciers on Disko island, in western Greenland in the Atlantic, from the end of the 19th century until the present day. "This study, which covers 247 of 350 glaciers on Disko, is the most comprehensive ever conducted on the movements of Greenland's glaciers," glaciologist Jacob Clement Yde, who carried out the study with Niels Tvis Knudsen, told AFP. Using maps from the 19th century and current satellite observations, the scientists were able to conclude that "70 percent of the glaciers have been shrinking regularly since the end of the 1880s at a rate of around eight meters per year," Yde said. "We studied 95 percent of the area covered by glaciers in Disko and everything indicates that our results are also valid for the glaciers along the coasts of the rest of Greenland," he said....
Trew: Historic Lincoln, N.M., offers window to the past This columnist usually writes about the past using personal recollections or those sent in by readers. Recently, Ruth and I spent three days and nights at the Ellis Store Bed & Breakfast in Lincoln, N.M. With little imagination, we were able to turn back the clock about 100 years or more while spending a nostalgic and interesting weekend in the real Old West. The Ellis Store building is 155 years old with walls of adobe about two-feet thick. Shady, vine-covered verandas adorned both front and back containing rows of wicker furniture. The roof was part galvanized tin and part wooden shake shingles. All doors and windows appeared to be original or of proper period. The history of the old building revealed it had been a private home, boarding house, ranch headquarters, a doctor’s office and TB sanitarium, and a general store at one time or another. The legal abstract goes back to the early 1800s and a Spanish Land Grant. There is absolutely no doubt Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett stayed and slept in the building as the Ellis Store was a gathering place for one of the range war factions....

FLE

States efforts to enforce immigration may be unconstitutional Lawmakers across the United States are passing local laws to get tough on illegal immigration, but legal experts say many of those laws will turn out to be unconstitutional. More than 550 bills relating to illegal immigration were introduced in statehouses this year, and at least 77 were enacted, according to a survey presented last week at the annual meetings of the National Conference of State Legislatures. But NCSL analyst Ann Morse told lawmakers that a 1986 federal law forbids states from enacting stricter criminal or civil penalties that those adopted by U.S. Congress. "The federal government decided it was too complicated for the states to enact their own competing laws on this," she said. So what about the laws passed this year? "I believe they'll be tested in court," she said....
The FBI’s continued technological incompetence is putting America at risk As The Washington Post reported on August 18, five years after 9/11 the FBI’s computer system is still not fixed. How can this be? It’s an ugly story of poor management, contractor abuse and an agency that cannot electronically connect the dots--even though nearly everyone agreed in 2001 that developing that ability should be among the top priorities for the United States. It’s as if after Pearl Harbor President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that ships and aircraft be built to fight the Japanese, only to discover that five years later the government had built none. The blame begins with Louis Freeh, who smugly headed the FBI for eight years under President Bill Clinton. Although he claims to have tried to upgrade the bureau’s computers in 1995, he failed miserably. In 2001, when any large business in the world that wanted to make money was long since fully automated-and when most American six-year olds could download Little League snapshots-the FBI remained in the horse-and-buggy era. Its rusty mainframes used text-only “green screens” and could not scan reports or transmit photographs. Agents had no PCs and were forced to share e-mail accounts. Because it took 12 steps to upload a single document, most agents gave up and did everything the old-fashioned way-on paper. Remember the period right after 9/11? I was hardly the only one writing about computers at the FBI. The new FBI director, Robert Mueller, insisted he was focused on the task at hand. He spent $170 million on a plan called “Trilogy” that was meant to solve the Bureau’s technology problems. From the start, it was a rip-off....
Police hit out at FBI over leaks Anti-terror police in Britain have made an angry request to their US counterparts asking them to stop leaking details of this month's suspected bomb plot over fears that it could jeopardise the chances of a successful prosecution and hamper the gathering of evidence. The British security services, MI5 and MI6, are understood to be dismayed that a number of sensitive details surrounding the alleged plot - including an FBI estimate that as many as 50 people were involved - were leaked to the media. FBI sources confirmed to The Observer that the bureau had been ordered to stop briefing at the request of the British authorities. 'The shutters have come down,' a bureau source said. 'We have been told not to discuss the case any more.' The request for silence by the British authorities is an early sign that those involved in the investigation have concerns at the way their evidence-gathering is proceeding....
Government Lawyers' Role in the War on Terror Inside the Bush White House, government lawyers have been instrumental in creating and justifying policies related to the detention and torture of alleged enemy combatants that are at odds with the Geneva Conventions - policies of exceptionalism that have gone hand-in-hand with a broader American unilateralism that has infuriated friends and foes alike. The blogosphere had offered some choice responses to Executive Branch lawyers' defense of the President's purported power, as commander-in-chief, to ignore congressional and international law limitations on the prosecution of the war on terror. These responses, taken together, amount to a fierce assault on the profession. As one prominent academic blogger, Professor Jack Balkin, responded to lawyerly justifications of torture and the like, "lawyers are whores" who will give intellectual cover to any position, no matter how wrong or unreasonable. It is important to evaluate such charges. But it is also exceedingly difficult. Executive branch justifications for overarching claims of presidential power invoke any number of relatively arcane theories of constitutional interpretation and statutory construction. It isn't easy to find the line between arguments that are merely unpersuasive, and ones that are so misguided that they (and the lawyers who advance them) merit our scorn. A recent series of articles in the Indiana Law Journal brings this issue into sharp focus. These articles take up the Administration's invocation of what scholars call the "constitutional avoidance" doctrine to justify a reservation of presidential power to torture or engage in warrantless wiretapping -- notwithstanding congressional statutes prohibit such activity. (That claimed reservation of power has been expressed not only in internal legal memos that have leaked, but also in Presidential signing statements regarding legislation such as the anti-torture legislation spearheaded by Senator McCain....)

NEWS ROUNDUP

Rancher gets help from BLM to ease impact of drilling A Heart Mountain landowner hopes guidelines recently adopted by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and changes to Wyoming's split-estate laws, will help mitigate the impact of gas drilling on his property. "I came real close to walking away from the deal," Jim Dager said of his plan to purchase the 2,640-acre Bison Ranch on the south and west slopes of Heart Mountain. Before closing on the property in January, Dager learned of federal mineral rights on the land and plans by Windsor Energy to drill a gas well there. "Two things that encouraged me to go through with it were the new split-estate act and the best management practices that BLM has adopted," he said. Windsor will be required to drill multiple wells directionally from a single pad, maintain a single battery of tanks, use a closed-loop drilling system to avoid open pits, group truck traffic at set times and bury a planned pipeline....
Unhappy hunting grounds The fight to protect the Roan Plateau and Colorado’s roadless areas from energy development has strayed beyond the realm of environmentalists and traditional wilderness advocates. The “hook and bullet” crowd — hunters, anglers, outfitters and other sportsmen — are now claiming wildland protection as their territory, a development that’s being noticed by the energy industry and politicians all over Colorado and the West. The fate of the Roan Plateau and roadless areas on Battlement Mesa is a personal issue for outfitters such as lifelong Republican Jeff Mead, owner of Rifle-based Mamm Peaks Outfitters. Since gas rigs began drilling near Mead’s hunting grounds, he said he’s lost nearly $70,000 in business because gas development is driving away Battlement Mesa’s big game. More than 3,000 acres of natural gas leases within roadless land in the White River National Forest near the Mamm Peaks went on the auction block Aug. 10. Across the Colorado River on the Roan Plateau, dust, noise and a plethora of heavy trucks are a sign of the times. “A year ago, you didn’t see speed limit signs posted on top of the Roan,” said Clare Bastable of the Colorado Mountain Club....
Utah Couple Sues USDA Over Dead Dog A Fillmore couple has filed a tort claim with the U.S. Department of Agriculture after their dog was killed by a cyanide bomb used as part of the agency’s predator control program in western states. Sharyn and Tony Aguiar’s 2-year-old German shepherd, Max, was with Sharyn at the Millard County rock quarry in April, when he disappeared for just minutes and was found dead, a pink foamy substance emanating from his mouth. Sharyn Aguiar now wants the USDA to discontinues use of the meat-scented cyanide bombs, also known as M-44s. “At first I just wanted to go out and post a sign that says ‘Watch your dog on public land,’ “she said. “Now, I want more than a sign. I want this stuff banned.” The intended target of the USDA’s bombs are coyotes that have harassed or killed sheep grazing on public lands....
Underground water will be valuable commodity, some say On a balmy October evening three years ago, Diane Johnson was kicking a soccer ball around the front yard with her two little girls when a stranger rumbled up the driveway in a pickup. Her husband, Steve, who had been cooking supper on a grill, came around the corner to see who had arrived. To the Johnsons' surprise, the stranger, W. Scott Carlson of Brenham, had a check for more than $300 with their names on it. He wanted to lease some of the water beneath their 121/2 acres of Burleson County land. All they had to do was sign a lease and endorse the check, Carlson said, and the bonus money of $25 per acre would be theirs. They also would reap some of the profits when his company sold the water. He was among the first people in the state to bet that water shortages would make groundwater a profitable business — maybe even the next big thing after oil....
Report: Climate change to have significant impact on N.M. water It would likely get hotter and New Mexico's water supply would be significantly impacted over the next century if greenhouse gas emissions continue, according to a report by the state engineer's office. The report released Friday offers a detailed perspective for the state on the international scientific community's latest projections of climate change induced by greenhouse gases. There is widespread agreement among climate scientists that such gases are changing the Earth's climate, the Albuquerque Journal reported Saturday in a copyright story. The report, based on 18 climate simulations by scientists around the world, states New Mexico would likely have an increased risk of drought over the next century and mountain snowpacks in the southern half of the state could be nonexistent by the late 21st century. The findings suggest added pressure that must be considered in a state already grappling with dry conditions and a limited water supply, said Anne Watkins, special assistant to the state engineer and the report's lead author....
A win-win solution Steve Hilde dreams of the time when ranchers have more time and hunters enjoy more access, and he has an idea how to achieve both. Hilde, a Loveland resident who spends his work day as a business development manager for technology giant Hewlett Packard, figures there’s no reason why Colorado can’t mimic other popular public-access on private-land programs available elsewhere, such as Montana’s Block Management and the Access Yes programs of Wyoming and Idaho. Although Hilde talks about the possibilities in terms more familiar with business managers than everyday hunters, tossing around comments about growth strategy, marketing shares, and price elasticity, he brings what might be a past-due new look at today’s big-game hunting situation. His concept is quite simple. Get public hunters on isolated or landlocked parcels of public land or on private land in exchange for helping ranchers do their core business easier and more cost effectively. Hilde’s proposal, which already is garnering immense support from sportsmen around the state, would pay ranchers to open their lands at a cost well within the reach of the average hunter....
Owyhee bill has degree of support Some environmental groups weren't happy with a provision of a proposed new 807-square-mile wilderness in the Owyhee Mountains that gives ranchers $15 million in cash and federal land, but they say the deal is worth the sacrifice. "We felt the appraisal process deviates too much from standard procedure," Craig Gehrke, of the Wilderness Society in Boise, told the Idaho Statesman. "However, from our perspective, the benefits of this package are enormous and we cannot afford to miss this opportunity." The bill being sponsored by Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, is the second federal land-use measure in Idaho to be put before this session of Congress. It joins a House-passed measure sponsored by Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, that would create a separate 492-square-mile wilderness in the Boulder-White Clouds Mountains in central Idaho. Under the Owyhee deal in southwest Idaho, for $7 million in cash or land exchanges, 15 ranchers would sell four square miles of land outright, sell scenic easements on 2.5 square miles, and sell eight miles of right of way to preserve or open up access to the Owyhee canyon lands. They'd also get $8 million in exchange for reducing or eliminate grazing on protected land....
Desert Fires' Damage Will Last April Sall stood in the charred remnants of a Joshua tree forest, bark peeling off melted black limbs. Above her, ridges once thick with 1,000-year-old piñon and juniper pines were scorched bedrock and stumps. More than 90% of the surrounding Pipes Canyon Preserve was consumed in last month's Sawtooth blaze. It was one of half a dozen fast-moving fires this summer that burned 65,000 acres of the Mojave Desert, fueling debate over whether the desert is burning more frequently and explosively as a result of invasive weeds, smog, development and climate change. "It's heartbreaking to see," said Sall, a biologist who manages the preserve and whose grandmother homesteaded the land a century ago. "We'll never see those piñon or juniper trees again in our lifetimes, nor will our children, nor will their grandchildren. It's a bitter pill…. This land isn't meant to burn." Many scientists agree, saying the recent blazes offer fresh evidence that deserts across the Southwest are undergoing a profound shift, as ancient native pine, shrubs and cactuses give way to young, highly flammable weeds and grasses....
Editorial: Something needs to give, when it comes to wolves and the state of Montana’s ability to manage them. That’s not how it was supposed to be. The wolf management plan that was adopted by Fish, Wildlife and Parks was pitched to the public as a path toward more responsive and flexible wolf management. From one part of the state to another, from one pack to the next, the state was supposed to be far more responsive than the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been with its limited team of wolf managers based in Helena. The state was supposed to have the ability to manage packs that have excessive impacts on big-game populations. Livestock owners, in fact, were supposed to have the ability themselves to respond to problem wolves. So how can it be that some of the critics in Ennis were pining for the old days when the Fish and Wildlife Service responded to conflicts?....
Winds of change The thing about West Texas that you can't ignore, that you can never forget, is the wind. On that big, flat stretch of land dotted with scrubby mesquite trees, the wind sweeps through effortlessly, unimpeded. It rakes across acres of ranchland, over cattle and rocks and red dirt, over nearly dry stock tanks and abandoned oil pump jacks. Always, always it whips at your face or pushes at your back. It fills your ears with a high-pitched, wavering whistle. There's always another gust on the way. And that wind brings a lot of things with it. Tumbleweeds, maybe, that scuttle along highways and prairies. Or dirt, picked up and carried through the air, turning the sky red, choking the atmosphere with dust and sand. These days, though, the wind is blowing something else across West Texas: change. Giant turbines are going up by the hundreds, planted all over the prairie to harness that wind and turn it into clean, renewable energy....
Settlement Will Provide Water for Parched River The lower stretch of the San Joaquin filled with runoff and farm drain water so tainted that it came to be known as the "lower colon of California." Now, thanks to a settlement in a tortured, nearly two-decade-long court fight, the San Joaquin is about to get some of its water back. The agreement, in the final stages of approval, is designed to resurrect the salmon run and return year-round flows to the river for the first time since Harry Truman was president. "The San Joaquin was just killed," said Harrison "Hap" Dunning, a UC Davis emeritus law professor and authority on water law. "It's a monumental restoration." It has not come easily. Kole Upton is a 63-year-old Chowchilla grower with a sharp sense of humor, an engineering degree from Stanford, and 1,200 acres of cotton, corn, almonds and wheat that would wither without water from the San Joaquin. He has been one of the leaders in years of off-and-on settlement negotiations involving growers, environmentalists and the federal government, which operates the dam....
Historic use bumps into property rights Above the San Geronimo Valley, a shimmering pastoral getaway in western Marin County, there is a fire road with panoramic views of the rolling, golden countryside. It has been used by hikers and horseback riders for the better part of a century and, in more recent times, by cyclists. The trail, known as the Dickson Ridge or Barnabe Mountain fire road, depending on where you are on it, is a crucial link in a continuous public path to the Pacific Ocean. But the seemingly peaceful trail is now at the center of a furious battle over public access, pitting trail users and county officials against a couple whose property includes a quarter-mile section of the fire road. The couple, David Mease and Catherine Salah, bought the property in 1999 intending to build a winery and their dream house. They didn't particularly like the idea of horses and humans tromping through their private Shangri-la....
Pests infest forests A bumper crop of bugs is chewing through Montana's forests. The bugs, primarily bark beetles and spruce budworms, leave behind patches of damaged trees that have a red and orange hue. But the outbreaks are part of a natural cycle in the forest, according to entomologists. However, that natural process is resulting in a growing number of dead trees, which is raising concerns. The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and the U.S. Forest Service collaborate on an annual inventory of "pest" issues in Montana forests. The most recent report, released earlier this month for 2005, shows bark beetle activity on the rise. Throughout the Northern Rockies, overgrown forests stressed by drought are increasingly crawling with beetles. Mild winters also mean more suitable conditions for the insects. Another startling trend over the past several years is how many trees are dying because of the infestations....
Family is leaving Forest Service land A family ordered to vacate U.S. Forest land it claims to have occupied since at least 1912 must be off the property in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest by the end of the month. Dave Stratton calls it "sad," but the Forest Service successfully argued in court that the Strattons do not own the land and an application to homestead the land in 1912 or 1913 was rejected because it was Forest Service land. The family has never paid rent or property taxes. Stratton and his 82-year-old mother, Vady, spent Thursday packing and dismantling their house. "It's a real tough time, but we're a proud family," Dave Stratton said. "We will pick up and move and it will be a new chapter in the family's history." Dave Stratton and his daughter are purchasing a house in Butte, and Vady hopes to get into senior housing in town. The Forest Service filed a lawsuit seeking to evict the Strattons in 2003 after the family rejected a land swap in which they would purchase another parcel of land for the Forest Service and keep the land they occupied....
Fur back in business and in trouble In a drab conference room in a nondescript Renton warehouse last spring, an auctioneer took a podium beneath huge photos of supermodels in mink coats and fur lingerie. He turned on his microphone and began soliciting bids. Before him, dozens of men and women buzzed in a babel of foreign languages — Russian and Italian, Chinese and Korean. But their common language was hanging on racks in the room next door: some 1.7 million shimmering pelts of farm-raised mink, and hundreds of thousands of wild beaver, raccoon, weasel and fox. This is the American Legend auction, the largest remaining fur market in the United States, where $100 million in business is transacted in a few days. Much as they have for more than a century, merchants from all over the world come to Western Washington to pick over silky skins of North American mammals on behalf of garment manufacturers who will produce next year's lines of boots, hats, gloves, scarves, blankets and coats. After a few rough decades, fur is back....
An extreme drought is taking a heavy toll on Texas ranchers The drought was everywhere at this week's cattle auction. It was in the rows of trailers that swamped the parking lot like a super Wal-Mart. It was in the protruding ribs of skinny cows being sold after months of too little to eat. It was on the tongue of every rancher who'd lost his bet with Mother Nature and was forced to sell long before his cows were ready — at a hefty loss. And despite his joking demeanor, it was in the worried blue eyes of Bodey Langford, 55, who was at his third auction this week, selling off the last of his calves so he can afford to keep feeding their mothers. "Every week, they keep talking about a chance of rain and you hold on and it doesn't rain. Sooner or later you just got to throw in the towel," said Langford, of the nearby Central Texas town of Fentress. "It's emotionally pretty tough. My wife says I'm pretty hard to get along with these days." The scene in Lockhart on Thursday is a common one these days as an extreme drought threatens the No. 1 cattle-producing state in the nation, baking pastureland, draining stock tanks and forcing ranchers to either sell off their herds or keep pouring profits into keeping them alive....
Tyson closing will hurt cattle industry in Idaho The closing of Tyson Foods Inc.'s beef-processing plant south of Boise will hurt the cattle industry in Idaho, the Idaho Cattle Association said Friday. "It's a significant loss in the infrastructure of the industry. ... It's always better when you can have a processing facility here in the state to take care of marketing those cattle," said Lloyd Knight, executive vice president of the association. Tyson announced Thursday that it would close the plant in October, leaving 270 employees out of work. The news came a year after Swift & Co. closed its beef-processing plant in Nampa. The J.R. Simplot Co. closed its Nampa plant in 2003. Tyson was the last large-scale commercial beef-processing facility in Idaho, Knight said. Several smaller facilities still are open throughout Idaho, he said, but most ranchers likely will have to ship their cattle to larger plants in the Northwest, including Tyson's facility in Pasco, Wash....
Rancher is still living her dream When the late Bob Isenberger decided to go into ranching 50 years ago, his wife said it was a dream come true. Pat Litton's dream met hard times and challenges, but has managed to live on to celebrate its 50-year anniversary. It's also a dream that resulted in a history of volunteerism for Wyoming youth and the agricultural industry. That contribution was recognized Wednesday during the Wyoming State Fair when Litton was inducted into the Wyoming Agriculture Hall of Fame. She married rodeo hand Bob Isenberger, and the young couple began working on ranches in the country north of Douglas. “I taught school there, and that's where I got my first lesson with sheep,” she said. The couple lived in a sheepwagon that now can be found in Litton's front yard. They spent that first spring together lambing 3,000 ewes....
Native Americans learn to alter tactics n the beginning, migrants found little to covet in the southeastern vastness of the Oregon Territory. The land was arid, the natives dirt poor and the dirt itself poor in a lot of places. "These were not horse Indians like the Nez Perce, Shoshone, Crow, and Sioux who lived on the well-watered ranges farther north and east," Bill Gulick says in "Roadside History of Oregon." "These were desert Indians who usually traveled on foot, had no buffalo in their country, and lived on roots, nuts, fish, and small game." Decades earlier, Hudson's Bay Co. fur brigade leader Peter Skene Ogden happened on one such group and traded for some roots to feed his own near-starving crew: " . . . from their looks I presume they have nothing else to subsist on, for more starving wretched looking beings I have never beheld, in fact, reduced to skin and bones," says Ogden's journal. These were the Snake, Paiute, Bannock. Settlers for the most part hastened by, put off by the barren state of both the landscape and those living there. But as the lush valleys west of the mountains filled up in the 1850s and '60s, the desert increasingly beckoned as a land of possibility, maybe even riches. Natives increasingly viewed migrants as interlopers and their livestock and civilized impedimenta as fair game....
A paper trail to a Ranger's past Descendants of Samuel McFall knew he had been a prominent rancher in Central Texas, but until about 30 years ago, they knew nothing about his exploits as a scrappy and traveled fighter for the Republic of Texas. McFall, a Kentucky native, served in various Ranger and militia companies in the 1830s and '40s, including the doomed 1842 Mier Expedition into Mexico, which landed him in a prison until he escaped a couple of years later. R.C. McFall, a longtime Johnson County commissioner, said his great-great-grandfather's past was finally revealed in the 1970s when the family opened a long-forgotten safe-deposit box in a bank in West. It contained several historical documents, including an 1845 land grant printed on lambskin. The certificate held an original seal and the signature of Anson Jones, the republic's last president....

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

Modern medicine and the cowboy

By Julie Carter

I told you no one would believe it, many didn't and wrote to tell me about it.

In response to my story about the blind yearling calf loading up in the trailer on his own, one doubter wrote that he suspected the influence of Crown Royal or at the very minimum, an anesthesia overdose not-yet-worn-off the cowboy sporting the $27,000 shoulder surgery.

He called that the second lie. "Greg wouldn't spend $27,000 on shoulder surgery," he said. "He won't spend that on a truck. If you don't believe me, ask him about "old red."

I responded by explaining to him that I trusted his assessment of his close friends but that the Crown Royal was very likely only available for medicinal purposes for those with refined taste preferring it over pain meds.

I also explained to this occasional ranch visitor that cowboys are sometimes the biggest babies-too tough to take the doc's advice or medication but world class at moaning and groaning for the 90-mile-drive back to the ranch. It's not unusual for the Mrs. to grab the pain pill bottle saying "Give me those blasted pills! One of us needs to feel better."

As for the $27,000 shoulder, most cowboys will sell their soul to get a body part fixed so they can go back out and do whatever it was they did to hurt it in the first place.

Another cowboy, on the wise-side of his fifth decade, had a stout three-year old colt buck him off resulting in an emergency room visit. This was followed by time spent with triage nurses, doctors, radiology technicians, family practice physicians, orthopedic specialists and bona fide physical therapist.

His wife carried a dictionary around to translate their diagnosis, prognosis, treatment protocols, medication and device advice. This was followed by a barrage of bills in the mail box that took a fair amount of accounting expertise to decipher.

The real problem at hand was getting to the cure. His actual diagnosis was Type 2 acromioclavicular separation, as in "hurt shoulder." That made logical sense as that is where he landed. If he had just had the foresight to find a soft spot to land all this could have, in theory, been avoided.

Each of the specialists, with a serious direct eye-to-eye gaze, told him to wear the immobilization device. We call that a splint. They advised he not lift anything including his arm and it would be six weeks before he move anything except his lips to moan.

Next came the electric stimulation to the muscles to facilitate healing and a very dedicated physical therapist determined to bring healing no matter the pain level. In a moment's time the cowboy was promoted from complete immobility to lifting weights over his head.

A series of repetitive moves with pulleys, weights and other devices ensued, moving the cowboy into a realm of exercises he couldn't have done before the accident, let alone while on injured reserve.

The cowboy declared there was nothing about roping that was as physically hard as what the therapist had him doing. So he went home from therapy, saddled his good horse and roped a pen of steers just because he could.

"Hee Haw's" multi-talented Archie Campbell played many rolls on the 60s-70s variety program, one of which was the leering doctor giving sage advice to his patients. "If it hurts when you do that, don't do that."

The jist of all the medical advice given to the cowboy is exactly what Dr. Archie was saying. If it hurts, don't do it. If the cowboy had just remembered Hee Haw, he could have saved a lot of money.

© Julie Carter 2006


The Dead Zone

by Larry Gabriel

If you have not heard of it, you will. The mass media is blaming "agriculture" for a predicted increase in the size of the so-called "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist Dave Whitehall recently issued a press release predicting that the anaerobic (oxygen depleted) area in the Gulf of Mexico known as "the dead zone" will grow by 40 percent this year due primarily to agricultural nutrient runoff into the Mississippi River.

Congress has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the theory that agricultural practices are primarily responsible for the dead zone. Congress apparently does not know that "agricultural nonpoint source" means everything except point sources, big city runoff and natural sources.

NOAA shut down testing the dead zone shortly after hurricane Katrina. The fishing in that zone boomed to abundance after the hurricane, indicating the anaerobic conditions lifted even though millions of tons of waste washed into the area from cities along the coast.

NOAA and EPA continue to blame "agriculture" and its use of fertilizer as the primary cause of the dead zone, but never point out that the lawns, football fields, baseball fields, soccer fields and golf courses of every town smaller than 50,000 people are deemed an "agricultural non-point source" of water pollution and fertilizer use for which "farmers" take the blame.

Why is that? Maybe it is because farmers are only a tiny percentage of the population and an easy political target, while sports fans, small towns and homeowners are not.

Here is a recent example of the results of the overbroad definition of agricultural sources: Subsidies wreak havoc on the ecosystem. One small example: There's a 6,000-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, larger than Connecticut. It's so depleted of oxygen because of algae blooms caused by fertilizer runoff that shrimp and crabs at the Louisiana shore literally try to leap from the water to breathe. This is endangering the profitable Gulf fishing industry. Most of the fertilizer comes from a few Midwestern counties that receive billions in subsidies (more than $30 billion from 1997 to 2002, according to the Environmental Working Group), so says columnist Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angles Times newspaper on August 3, 2006, in an article entitle "Welfare Queens on Tractors".

This is portrayed as a national effort to save commercial fishing in the Gulf. A public radio story said, Agricultural runoff in the Mississippi River that flows into the Gulf of Mexico is suffocating sea life and threatening a once-thriving Louisiana industry…Spring runoff from the Mississippi is loaded with nitrogen-based fertilizers from farms. The fertilizer has the same effect in the Gulf as it does on the Midwest fields it came from. But instead of giving corn a growth spurt, the nitrogen fuels massive algae blooms that then die and suck all of the oxygen out of the water as they decompose.

How many millions of acres of heavily fertilized and irrigated lawn-type grass are in the "agricultural nonpoint source" in North America?

Maybe the real "dead zone" threat is simply an area where truth is not welcome.

Mr. Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture

OPINION/COMMENTARY

The Western Property Rights Wildfire

The stakes are high for property owners this November, as voters in at least five Western states will decide on ballot measures designed to protect private property rights from the expanding reach of regulators. Taking their cue from a similar initiative passed by Oregon voters in 2004, all of these measures aim to provide landowners relief from regulatory takings – the de facto "taking" of private property via restrictions on the ability of property owners to use their land in ways legal at the time they bought their property. In other words, regulatory takings occur when government changes the rules of the game, adopting regulations that prevent landowners from realizing the economic potential of their property investment. Imagine if government were to pass a law that prevented citizens from accessing half of the 401K funds they've accumulated after years of work. The outrage would be swift and vociferous. Yet, states and local governments nationwide routinely enact land use regulations that artificially dampen private property values. The difference is that the impacts of land use regulation tend to go unnoticed unless your property happens to be one of the ones affected. While the state ballot measures share a common intention with Measure 37—protecting landowners from regulatory takings—each measure takes a unique approach (see Table 1 below):....

'Cane Mutiny

What a difference one year makes. With the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall (August 29, 2005) rapidly approaching, who would have predicted that we would now be in the middle of a near-normal Atlantic hurricane season? Weren't the global warming pundits' predictions for this hurricane season that it would be just as bad -- maybe even worse! -- than last year? Yet, now at mid-August, we have had only three named tropical storms, compared to nine by this date last year. Normally, we would have had one hurricane by now, and we have not had any so far, so by that measure we are actually below normal. Hurricanes require warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and last year the tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures were running well above normal. Global warming was the explanation given by most 'experts' the media interviewed. And since global warming will only get worse, those SSTs were expected to just keep on increasing. But now those same regions that had anomalously warm SSTs last year are -- gasp! -- near normal. The accompanying graphic shows large areas in the tropical Atlantic even a little cooler than normal....

How Green Is Your Church?

In the first chapter of the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are commanded to "tend and keep" the Garden of Eden, as well as to "fill the Earth", and "subdue" and "have dominion" over the creation. It is clear that mankind is given a dominant role in the biblical creation, with God's permission to use the Earth's natural resources to serve our needs. Yet, we now know that it is possible to damage the creation in ways that makes portions of it unfit for further use for many years. Some chemicals we have developed are very hazardous to humans. For instance, the generation and safe storage of nuclear waste from power plants remain challenges. The Earth is marvelously resilient, constantly cleansing our air and water, yet we know from experience that there are limits to this resiliency. The tension over what constitutes environmental "stewardship" has led to a wide range of opinions within the Christian church on the subject. Some churches have been actively involved in the environmental movement since the 1970's. The concern has been expressed in ways as small as recycling waste, to what can only be called "Earth worship", elevating the value of the creation to a position above that of mankind. The past several months have had considerable activity in the Christian church on the subject of climate change. On February 1st of this year, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) announced that they would not adopt a position statement on global warming that they had been considering since 2004. The NAE, which claims to represent 30 million church members, noted that there is considerable disagreement within the church regarding the causes and severity of, as well as the responses to, the global warming threat. The NAE decision greatly disappointed environmentalists. Then, later in the month, 86 evangelical leaders calling themselves the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI) issued a statement at a press conference that called for action to fight global warming. The ECI claimed that the threat from global warming was greatest for the world's poor, and so Christians must be involved in the issue....

MONTANA GROUP ALERTS FEDS TO LIKELY GRIZZLY BEAR LAWSUIT

A community-based, nonprofit group today notified several federal officials and their agencies of a likely lawsuit as a result of several violations of the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) involving the grizzly bear. Communities for a Great Northwest (CGNW), which is based in Libby, Montana, in the northwestern corner of the State, advised the officials that the decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to protect grizzly bears on the basis of so-called “distinct population segments” rather than their total population violates the ESA and federal regulations. Specifically at issue is the 2004 Biological Opinion for the Kootenai, Idaho Panhandle, and Lolo National Forests Land and Resource Management Plans Amendment for Motorized Access within the Selkirk and Cabinet-Yaak Grizzly Bear Recovery Zones; however, the group alleges that other opinions and federal plans are implicated by the violations regarding the grizzly bear population. “The people of northwestern Montana and northern Idaho have been whipsawed by the ever increasing demands of federal officials regarding the grizzly bear,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation. “It is now clear that those demands are illegal and must end.” The ESA requires all federal agencies to consult with the FWS on any future agency action if there is reason to believe that a protected species is present in the area and “implementation of such action will likely affect such species.” Thereafter, the FWS issues an opinion on whether the continued existence of the entire species is likely to be jeopardized. In 1986, however, the FWS decided to protect species, not on the basis of an entire population, but based on separate populations; no legal authority was cited. Although the ESA does permit listing “Distinct Population Segments” (“DPSs”) separately from the remainder of a species, each such DPS must be listed in full compliance with the ESA. The FWS has failed to comply with these statutory requirements in naming distinct populations segments even though Congress, “aware of the potential for abuse,” intended this authority to be used “sparingly” and only with “biological evidence” warranting action....

Gore Sea Levels?

Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth says human-emitted CO2 will boost the earth’s temperatures enough to melt the Arctic ice cap—and suddenly raise sea levels by 20 feet. Phooey. First of all, let’s understand just how cold the Antarctic is. Winter temperatures on its high, cold interior plateau range from 40 to 95 degrees F below zero! In the summer (December) it “warms,” with temperatures dipping only to 49 degrees F below zero—and sometimes rising within 25 degrees F of the melting point (32 degrees F). But even then, the ice reflects virtually all of the sun’s rays back out into space. However, the world’s warming in the past 150 years has produced a change in Antarctica. The huge East Antarctic ice sheet, which contains nearly 90 percent of the world’s ice, has been thickening. European satellites measured the ice sheet’s thickness 347 million times between 1992 and 2003, and found it is gaining about 45 billion tons of water per year because the planet has warmed enough for snow to fall at the coldest place on earth. The study, “Snowfall-driven Growth in East Antarctic Ice Sheet Mitigates Recent Sea-level Rise” was led by Curt Davis of the University of Missouri, and reported in Science on June 24, 2005. Thickening ice in the Antarctic, in fact, is just about offsetting the meltwater being released from the edges of the Greenland ice sheet—which has also been thickening in its center. This leaves us with a global warming sea level gain of about 1.8 millimeters per year—or 4 inches per century. The rise has remained constant during the 20th century despite the moderate 0.6 degree C warming of the planet....

Deadly Intentions: The New (Old) Animal-Rights Philosophy

Law enforcement in England is celebrating after the man one police department calls "the Animal Liberation Front’s top bomber" entered guilty pleas in court yesterday. Long-time British activist Donald Currie, first arrested in March, admitted that he set an arson fire at a house occupied by a woman and her young daughter. He also pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing explosives "with intent to endanger life." The Animal Liberation Front publicly claimed responsibility for both crimes (see here and here). So much for the animal rights movement’s oft-heard pious boast of being fundamentally nonviolent. The Times of London reports that Currie already had a string of previous convictions for criminal damage, assault, and other offenses. And The Sun, another London paper, adds that Currie "admitted having an arsenal of explosives he planned to use on further targets." It’s becoming clearer that the notion of animal rights extremists going out of their way to avoid shedding human blood is a quaint misconception -- and not just a British one. In this country, Animal Liberation Front spokesperson (and long-time former Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine front-man) Dr. Jerry Vlasak has talked openly about killing people to save animals. And former People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals "National Lecturer" Gary Yourofsky has insisted that he would "unequivocally support" the murder of medical researchers during an animal-rights arson....