NEWS ROUNDUP

From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype Hollywood has a thing for Al Gore and his three-alarm film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won an Academy Award for best documentary. So do many environmentalists, who praise him as a visionary, and many scientists, who laud him for raising public awareness of climate change. But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism. “I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,” Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.” Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots. Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for “getting the message out,” Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were “overselling our certainty about knowing the future.” Typically, the concern is not over the existence of climate change, or the idea that the human production of heat-trapping gases is partly or largely to blame for the globe’s recent warming. The question is whether Mr. Gore has gone beyond the scientific evidence....
It's Not Pretty Being Green THE LATEST CRAZE in architecture, after fizzled experiments in Modernism, Post Modernism, Brutalism, Deconstructionism, and Post-Brutal-Deconstructed-Neo-Modernism, is a genuflection to environmentalism called "Green Building" or "Sustainable Architecture." For the most part, building "Green" means cloaking an intrinsically inefficient high rise building in an ecological hair shirt that makes owners feel good and tenants feel miserable. The latest example of Green Building has risen in San Francisco, where the city by the Bay has ripped apart one of the grittier parts of its foggy utopia to construct what is surely the most ridiculous building of our still young century: the poetically-named Federal Building. A unique combination of crackpot environmentalism and elaborate ugliness, the Federal Building will finally opens its doors (or flaps, or airlocks, or orifices, or something) later this month and it will boast a number of odd design "features." For instance, the Federal Building is an office tower tall enough to disrupt the city's skyline, yet its elevators only stop on every third floor--the better to conserve energy. And after trudging up and down the stairs on a blazing summer afternoon the unfortunate tenants soak in their own sweat because the building has no air conditioning . . . again to save energy. Who could have conceived of such a thing? Imagine a hip West Coast architect who surrounds himself with turtle necked young designers and calls his firm Morphosis and you have Thom Mayne....
There Are Big Problems With Ethanol, Namely Corn Supply The reality is that it's costly and incredibly inefficient to unlock energy stored inside plant cells, relative to the effort needed to distill comparable volumes of fuel from crude, even crude as expensive as it is today. The reality is that making biofuels from Brazilian sugar cane is much easier, cheaper and kinder to the environment than using Midwestern grain. The reality is that we care about all those principles so much as to impose a stiff tariff on Brazilian ethanol, lest it displace our homebrew. The end result is that corn, traditionally America's most abundant natural resource, has turned into the focus of a scarcity scare, with futures prices nearly doubling, in just eight months. So taxpayers end up subsidizing this folly thrice: Once in federal payments to corn producers that totaled almost $9 billion last year, again in a tax credit of 51 cents per gallon for ethanol producers and a third time in the supermarket checkout line. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture expects ethanol's claim on the corn crop to increase by 50% this year, sucking up more than a quarter of the national output. Legislation passed in 2005 requires the use of "renewable fuels" to rise by more than 50% from current levels by 2012....
Environmentalism Religion Rather Than Science, Says Czech Leader Centralized planners seeking to "rule from above" are operating under the guise of environmentalism and other fashionable "isms" in a bid to attack freedom and liberty, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said here. Addressing an audience at the CATO Institute in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Klaus argued that although communism has been eradicated in Eastern Europe, there are renewed efforts in this new century to reintroduce statist schemes. Those who have experienced the absence of freedom in their lifetimes have a "special sensitivity" to dangerous and disturbing trends at work in Europe and America, Klaus said. He identified what he said were three main "internal challenges" to freedom. Fashionable and trendy "isms" like environmentalism seek to "radically re-organize human society" in a way that is detrimental to the freedoms that were secured just 17 years ago when Soviet communism fell, he argued. Proponents of the environmental ideology were attempting to sell the public on "catastrophic scenarios" that could be used to justify the restoration of statist practices, he said....
Prairie dog poisoning planned in N.D. Ranchers’ complaints have prompted the U.S. Forest Service to propose poisoning about 12,000 prairie dogs this fall on federal grasslands in western North Dakota. Officials say it would be the first time in 15 years that poison has been proposed for the rodents in that area. “Prairie dog colonies are crossing property lines to private and state land, and vice versa,” said Dan Svingen, a Forest Service biologist in Bismarck. “We’re only doing it where a neighboring landowner does not want prairie dogs.” The agency plans to lace oats with the rodenticide zinc phosphide to kill the animals. Svingen said the poison would be spread over an area of about 700 acres....
Cloud seeding project gets sent back to state A controversial cloud seeding experiment over the Wind River Range has momentarily stalled while the state considers cost estimates for the project, including the price for the necessary environmental studies by the U.S. Forest Service. The project would affect the Bridger Wilderness, the Fitzpatrick Wilderness and the Popo Agie Wilderness. It is intended to cause 10 percent to 15 percent more snowfall each year of the five year project. Officials with Weather Modification Inc. filed an application to put up to 12 ground-based generators targeting Raid Peak and Granite Peak. So far, five generators have been put on private or state land and the Forest Service has received permit applications for two on the Bridger-Teton and one on the Shoshone national forests. Those permits will require environmental studies, which, by law, the applicant – in this case the state – must pay for, said Bridger-Teton spokeswoman Mary Cernicek. At issue is whether the state can, or should, modify the environment of a congressionally protected wilderness area....
Court: No Fake Snow at Sacred Peak A ski area on a northern Arizona mountain may not use treated wastewater to make snow because that would violate the rights of American Indian tribes that consider the peak sacred, a federal appeals court has ruled. The Arizona Snowbowl on the San Francisco Peaks north of Flagstaff wanted to add a fifth chair lift, spray man-made snow and clear about 100 acres of forest to extend its ski season. However, the Navajo Nation and a dozen other Southwest tribes filed suit to block the project, arguing that it would violate their religious freedom. The lawsuit also said the government did not adequately address the environmental effect of using wastewater, which would be pumped up a pipeline from Flagstaff. In a decision Monday, Judge William A. Fletcher of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the snowmaking scheme violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and would be akin to using wastewater in Christian baptisms....
Ski resort owner pledges to make snow, no matter what The owner of the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort said he is committed to installing snowmaking equipment, despite a federal appeals court ruling that said a plan to use treated wastewater violated the religious freedom of Indian tribes. Snowbowl owner Eric Borowsky said he'll either try to have Monday's ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, or make snow using water pumped from company owned land. "We are definitely going forward with this," Borowsky said. "This ruling is definitely the wrong ruling and it has a major impact on federal land ... I think this decision is saying that if a Native American thinks it impacts his religion, then you're not allowed to do it."....
Study: Thinning trees helps build water table In 2001, the Otero SWCD received a grant to thin parts of the watershed. At Sunspot, eight acres on the western slope below the National Solar Observatory were thinned. The Circle Cross Ranch thinned more than 40 acres along the western boundary of Timberon, and the Southern Cross Ranch thinned 337 acres south of Timberon. Other entities, like the Bureau of Land Management and Timberon, had also received and used thinning project money. "All together, we treated about 3,000 aces," Abercrombie said. Otero SWCD began monitoring the static water levels in six of the wells in the watershed. The water level data has been collected since 2003. At the Southern Cross well, results are dramatic. In mid-2004, the water was found at 80 feet under the surface. In 2005, the water had risen to 10 feet beneath the surface. Abercrombie said he can think of no other reason for such a dramatic change than the thinning of the trees....
Deal with the devil: Jobs not worth damage from coal mine, trucking A deal with a coal-mining company could bring 100 jobs to picturesque, rural Kane County. But residents of Panguitch who make their living off tourism believe it would be a deal made with the devil. They argue that a steady stream of coal-bearing semitrailer trucks driving from the proposed strip mine between Alton and Bryce Canyon National Park along U.S. 89 to I-15 would discourage visitors and new residents. It's obvious they are right. The continuous rumble and safety hazard of a coal caravan - a truck every four minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week - would scare off just about anybody looking for a quiet respite or retirement home. The justified outcry over a plan to strip-mine 2,600 acres of this scenic piece of Utah calls attention to a growing New West war. This battle pits the economic driver of the past, the destructive extraction industry, with the clean, environmentally conscious harbingers of future prosperity - tourism and outdoor recreation. Kane and Garfield counties and the towns of Panguitch, Alton and Hatch should take the side of tourism in this battle. If the Bureau of Land Management approves the mine and its trucking plan, it will compromise the future economic health of the region....
Interior Dept. Energy Leases Prompt a Suit A decision by the Interior Department to reactivate 20-year-old energy drilling leases in southern Utah areas that have since been set aside for protection and recreation will be challenged in court on Wednesday by three environmental groups. The groups argue that the reactivation amounts to granting illegal new leases on protected lands. The Bureau of Land Management, the Interior Department agency responsible for the areas, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the Glen Canyon National Recreation area, has said its decisions on the 23 leases were correcting its failure to give the three leaseholders final rulings on their petitions when they were filed in the ’80s. A spokeswoman for the bureau’s Salt Lake City office, Mary Wilson, said in a statement that the applicants had procedural rights that the bureau could honor now only by taking action that it failed to take years ago to clear the way for the leaseholders to try to retrieve oil from tar sands in the protected areas....
Endangered Rabbits Return to Washington The Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit is finally back in its old stomping grounds, munching olive-drab sagebrush and hopefully doing what rabbits do best. Twenty of the creatures _ each not much bigger than a man's hand _ were set free Tuesday in a remote wildlife reserve, an attempt to jump-start their population in central Washington state. The rabbits were born and raised at Washington State University and at the Portland Zoo in Oregon. They are descendants of the last known wild rabbits, caught in 2002. The Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit is the country's smallest native rabbit and the only one in the United States to dig its own burrows. The rabbit was listed for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2003....
Agency revises grizzly methods The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released three documents Tuesday that are precursors to removing federal protection for grizzly bears in the greater Yellowstone area, an action expected later this spring. Some conservation groups took note of the documents and found them lacking in serious protection for the grizzly bear or its habitat to prevent relisting of the animal under the Endangered Species Act. Two supplement documents to the grizzly bear recovery plan present revised methods to estimate population size and sustainable death limits for the Yellowstone grizzly bear population, and establish habitat-based recovery criteria for the bears. A third document, the final conservation strategy for the grizzly in the region, will guide state and federal management decisions for the Yellowstone grizzly bear population upon delisting....
Carson Lake grazing agreement signed A handful of local ranchers will again be able to graze their cattle at Carson Lake and Pasture this year following the signing of the management agreement for livestock grazing between the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District and the Bureau of Reclamation. The agreement was signed by TCID President Ernie Schank at the district's board meeting last week. Norm Norcutt, TCID grazing manager at Carson Lake, said 17 ranchers graze about 2,600 cattle at the site. The animals usually graze from early April to November on the 29,718.16 acres, Schank said. The actual number of cattle allowed to graze is dependent upon the animal unit months determined by the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency which owns the property. An AUM is the amount of forage needed to feed a cow for one month. Grazing permits will cost ranchers $5 per AUM to BOR and $2 per AUM to TCID. The irrigation district will also impose a $1.50 per head surcharge for administering vaccines and spraying for insecticide....
High corn price tempers interest in conservation acreage U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns will decide by early this summer whether to ease contract penalties for farmers who pull acres out early from a government program that pays them to set their land aside for conservation, his department said Tuesday. With ethanol demand driving corn prices higher, more farmers are mulling whether to take their land out of the Conservation Reserve Program _ a move conservationists fear will lead to the loss of millions of habitat acres for game birds and other endangered species. Johanns will base his decision in part on the Agricultural Statistics Service prospective planting report that comes out March 23, said Keith Williams, spokesman for the Agriculture Department in Washington, D.C. Johanns also will factor in the newly released results from a special offer made last year to landowners with expiring acres. "He has not made a decision, and he doesn't have the information to make a decision at this point in time," Williams said....
Wolves lose their federal protection After three decades under the watchful eye of the federal government, the protection and management of wolves is falling back into the hands of the state and tribal governments. At 12:01 a.m. Monday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially removed the western Great Lakes population of gray wolves from the federal list of threatened and endangered species. Shooting wolves will no longer be a federal offense, although state laws already in place mean it will still be illegal in most cases. The federal de-listing will make it easier for farmers, dog owners and government trappers to kill wolves. A farmer who sees a wolf threatening cattle can legally shoot it for the first time in 40 years....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Multitude of uses for those rotten avocados My friend Steve is in the avocado business, which I think makes him an avocadonist, or an avocodinarian. He has many distributors (avocodlers) who count on him to keep them supplied. The freeze that hit southern California this winter wiped out the crop. I called him after I heard him being interviewed on national radio. When he answered, he was in Chile! Turns out he was down there and in Mexico, home of guacamole, arranging to import Spanish-speaking avocados to fill the gap for the avocadophiles in the United States of Avocado. Steve explained that 20-degree weather kills the fruit and it becomes useless. I commented that when old bananas turn black, the average mother with children will say, "Don't throw it away, we'll make banana bread out of it!" So I postulated there must be some way to use old black avocados. There is a rum drink with pineapples, coconuts and a paper umbrella called a Piña Colada. How 'bout the Avocolada? Maybe use something dark like prune juice, a coagulant like vitamin K and a miniature Mexican flag!....