OPINION/COMMENTARY


How much land should the government own?

Government – at every level – is addicted to land acquisition. Local, state and federal governments are buying up land as if the last acre had already been created. In a nation that was founded on the belief that private property is sacred – and which limited its federal government to own only 100 square miles of land and that which could be purchased from the states with the approval of the state legislature, and then only for "needful buildings" – why have governments gone on a land-buying binge in recent years? The answer, invariably, will take some form of the misguided notion, "... to protect it for future generations." Every acre of land acquired by government, beyond that necessary for public buildings, highways, utilities, military bases and the like, is actually stealing from future generations. When government owns the land, future generations cannot own it. Future generations cannot build a home on it. Future generations cannot farm or ranch or log or mine or do anything with it. Future generations can only walk on it, if the government permits it, after paying a fee for the privilege. Government land ownership is not protecting the land for future generations; it is protecting land from future generations.


Bureaucrats: "Don't know much about [the Constitution]"

On March 19, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Wilkie v. Robbins, a case from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver, Colorado, regarding whether federal bureaucrats are liable for violating a citizen’s constitutional rights. Among the rather technical, legalistic questions before the Court—such as whether RICO (the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) and a Bivens claim (pertaining to constitutional violations by federal employees) apply in the case—is this stunning question posed by government lawyers: Whether the right to exclude others from property is sufficiently established that federal employees should know, when they retaliate against an owner for excluding them, that they are violating his constitutional rights! How can federal lawyers, who have taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution, claim that federal bureaucrats do not know it is wrong to retaliate against a person for exercising his constitutional rights? Perhaps a little background is in order. Harvey Frank Robbins owns the High Island Ranch, a cattle and guest ranch in Hot Springs County, Wyoming. In 1994, Mr. Robbins’ predecessor granted the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) an easement to use a road that crossed the ranch, which the BLM wanted to access other federal land, in exchange for a limited right-of-way to use that same road where it crossed BLM land. He recorded his right-of-way; however, the BLM failed to record its easement. Unaware of the unrecorded easement, Mr. Robbins later purchased the ranch and, thereby, under Wyoming law, automatically extinguished the BLM’s easement. Upon learning that its easement had been extinguished, the BLM demanded that Mr. Robbins grant it an easement without compensation. When he refused, BLM employees began a campaign of threats, harassment, and intimidation to coerce him into relinquishing his rights to exclude the federal government from his private property....


Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says

Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human- induced—cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory. Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures. In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun. "The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said. Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets. Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories. "Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said....


An Early Environmentalist, Embracing New ‘Heresies’ Stewart Brand has become a heretic to environmentalism, a movement he helped found, but he doesn’t plan to be isolated for long. He expects that environmentalists will soon share his affection for nuclear power. They’ll lose their fear of population growth and start appreciating sprawling megacities. They’ll stop worrying about “frankenfoods” and embrace genetic engineering. In addition to publishing the Whole Earth Catalog, he organized the first Hackers Conference, in 1984, and helped found The WELL, the early electronic community that was a sort of prototype of the Web. In Professor Turner’s history, he was the impresario who knew everyone and brought the counterculture and the cyberculture together, from the Homebrew Computer Club in the 1970s to Wired magazine in the 1990s. He is now promoting environmental heresies, as he called them in Technology Review. He sees genetic engineering as a tool for environmental protection: crops designed to grow on less land with less pesticide; new microbes that protect ecosystems against invasive species, produce new fuels and maybe sequester carbon. He thinks the fears of genetically engineered bugs causing disaster are as overstated as the counterculture’s fears of computers turning into Big Brother. “Starting in the 1960s, hackers turned computers from organizational control machines into individual freedom machines,” he told Conservation magazine last year. “Where are the green biotech hackers?”...,


'Global Warming'

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, by Christopher C. Horner, Washington, DC: Regnery, Jan 2007, 350pp softback, $20. What a shame that this penetrating, sarcastic yet accurate polemic has to be made available as something "politically incorrect." Since it was written by a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, this by itself might have been enough to make an old "tree-hugger" avoid it. Part I is an exposé of the true motivations of today’s self-proclaimed enviros, who are shown to take seriously the line: "We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you!" Their priorities are shown by Horner to be global government, tight controls over individuals, and, very oddly for Americans, leveling the playing field for business by transferring wealth from developed countries to the rest. This is shown to be the only result so far among the 15 countries participating in the Kyoto Treaty to lower carbon dioxide emissions. Actually the Treaty is said to be aimed at lowering carbon dioxide concentrations, which is a stretch. Emissions among the 15 have not been lowered at all, but wealth has been transferred. Since human-caused warming has little basis in science, as shown below, enviro beliefs must be considered to be a strange religion, according to Horner. Claims of consensus for the enviros’ alarmist views are dismissed by showing how certain literature searches were woefully incomplete and how many climatologists with credentials, as well as other scientists, do not agree with the alarmist view even though they are not "Holocaust deniers." Part II deals with the claims made for the effect of carbon dioxide on "global warming." Changes in near-surface temperatures of the Earth are presented in clear form with adequate graphs....


SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT; KILL A FEDERAL PROGRAM

In an effort to serve as a model of efficiency, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) recently suggested that a first step in reducing greenhouse gases would be to require that federal buildings use more efficient light bulbs and ask federal bureaucrats to turn off their computers at night, says the Wall Street Journal.

Sen. Boxer's proposals finally represent a good idea for environmental efficiency, says the Journal. The U.S. government is currently one of the most inefficient energy users, which comes at a high cost:

* According to a 1999 report by the Alliance to Save Energy, the federal government consumes about 32 percent more energy per square foot than the nation's building stock at large, this inefficiency costs taxpayers an estimated $1 billion a year.
* The U.S. Government Accountability Office reports that from 1980 to 1996 the Department of Energy alone wasted away more than $10 billion on programs that were terminated before completion.
* The Senate Government Reform Committee has identified more than $200 billion of budget savings by eliminating redundant and wasteful federal activities.

Of course, it follows from all this that the best way to make the federal government more energy efficient would be to undertake a government-wide policy of lights out permanently, says the Journal. Save the environment; kill a federal program.

Source: Editorial, "Uncle Sam's Greenhouse Gases," Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2007.

For text:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117280577393624430.html


OSCAR AND THE GROUCH

Although Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth," and its opus -- built around the premise that Greenland's 630,000 cubic miles of ice is melting -- won an Oscar, it's not based in reality, says Investor's Business Daily (IBD).

Consider:

* Satellite data published in the November 2005 issue of Science did show that Greenland was losing about 25 cubic miles of ice per year, meaning Greenland was shedding ice at the rate of only about 0.4 percent per century.
* Earlier this month, Science published another paper showing that the recent acceleration of Greenland's ice loss had suddenly reversed.
* According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, at the 2005 rate, Greenland's ice loss would have contributed less than an inch to sea level rise during the 21st century.

Additionally:

* An earlier study published in Science by Ola Johannessen of the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, found that ice was actually accumulating on Greenland's interior glaciers.
* British environmental analyst Lord Christopher Monckton says the Greenland ice sheet grew an average extra thickness of 2 inches a year from 1993 to 2003.
* A study published by the National Center for Policy Analysis reported that not only had the Greenland ice mass grown, but that average summer temperatures at the summit of the Greenland ice sheet have decreased 4 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the late 1980s.

Further, Petr Chylek of the department of physics and atmospheric science at Dalhousie University notes that Gore in his movie suggests the Greenland melt area increased considerably between 1992 and 2005. But, as Chylek points out, 1992 was exceptionally cold in Greenland and if Gore had chosen for comparison the year 1991, he would have to conclude that the ice sheet melt area is shrinking and that perhaps a new Ice Age is just around the corner.

Source: Editorial, "Oscar And The Grouch," Investor's Business Daily, February 27, 2007.

For text: http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=257387017974717