Cool And The Gang Knut the polar bear isn't so cute and cuddly anymore. He's grown up a tad and is now a killing machine capable of surviving in perhaps the Earth's most hostile environment — the Arctic. Nor is the poster animal for warming warnings that drive children to tears and his kind in danger of perishing anytime soon. Funny thing about ice: It melts in summer and thickens in winter. And according to Gilles Kangis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice service in Ottawa, this Arctic winter has been so severe that the continent's allegedly vanishing ice is 10 to 20 centimeters thicker than it was at this time a year ago. Recent satellite images, moreover, show the polar ice cap is at near-normal coverage levels, according to Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Branch of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. This is a consequence of what we recently commented on: The sun, the greatest influence on earth's climate, seems to be entering an unusually quiet cycle of limited sunspot activity. As Kenneth Tapping of Canada's National Research Council warns, we may be in for severely cold weather if sunspot activity doesn't pick up. Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he calls a "stethoscope for the sun." The last time the sun was this quiet, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age, which lasted five centuries and ended in 1850. The winter at Valley Forge, a famous part of history, occurred during this period. It's a good time, therefore, for some of the best climate scientists in the world to be gathering in New York City — setting for the Al Gore-promoted doomsday flick "The Day After Tomorrow" — for the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change hosted by the Heartland Institute. More than 550 climate scientists, economists and public policy experts are at March 2-4 event, their very presence shattering Gore's myth of a warming "consensus" and a debate that is over. Yet because of the media's embrace of Gore's crusade, this may be one of the few places you read about the conference....
Luxury Homes Burn in Apparent Eco-Attack Three seven-figure dream homes went up in flames early Monday in a Seattle suburb, apparently set by eco-terrorists who left a sign mocking the builders' claims that the 4,000-plus-square-foot houses were environmentally friendly. The sign — a sheet marked with spray paint — bore the initials ELF, for Earth Liberation Front, a loose collection of radical environmentalists that has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks since the 1990s. The sheriff's office estimated that Monday's pre-dawn fires did $7 million in damage to the "Street of Dreams," a row of unoccupied, furnished luxury model homes where tens of thousands of visitors last summer eyed the latest in high-end housing, interior design and landscaping. Three homes were destroyed and two suffered smoke damage. The FBI was investigating the fires as a potential domestic terrorism act, said FBI spokesman Rich Kolko in Washington, D.C....
On the Earth Liberation Front Arson is a strange way to defend the Earth. The hardcore environmental activists behind the Earth Liberation Front disagree. According to the Associated Press, the group has previously taken credit (if it can be called that) for several arsons in the northwest of the United States. They've attacked U.S. Forest Service buildings and a Colorado ski resort, the latter assault doing US$12-million in damage. In one case, the ELF burned down a horticulture building at the University of Washington because they were angry that researchers therein were genetically engineering trees. Actually, researchers weren't doing anything of the sort in the building. They were too busy preserving endangered plants and restoring wetlands. But by the time someone told the ELF that, it had already done about US$7-million of damage. The genetically-engineered poplars that the ELF was so exercised about were actually housed in a separate building that was untouched by the attack. Now, separate fires in 4 luxury show homes in a Seattle suburb look like the ELF's latest handiwork. (A sign bearing the initials "ELF" and complaining "Built Green? Nope black!" was left on the scene.)....
New houses becoming popular targets The Earth Liberation Front has its roots in the militant opposition to logging of old-growth forests. Beginning in 1996, an underground group launched more than a dozen arsons against targets that included the U.S. Forest Service, timber companies, a horse slaughterhouse, a car dealership and a University of Washington researcher believed to be genetically engineering poplar trees. But in recent years, new housing developments popping up on the urban fringes have become the most high-profile targets claimed by the ELF. Those attacks include a 2002 arson that destroyed a San Diego apartment complex and caused $50 million in damage, and a 2000 torching of a luxury housing development in Mount Sinai, N.Y. "If you build it, we will burn it," was the graffiti left at the scene of the New York fire, according to The New York Times....
NYT Term for Eco-Terrorists: 'Anti-Sprawl Activists' Opening paragraph from the New York Times article on the eco-terrorists who burned three new homes north of Seattle today [emphasis added]: For people who are anti-sprawl activists — or have baser motives — a new-built house sitting empty in a previously rural area evidently makes a ripe target for an attack by fire. Consider also the article's headline "House Fires With a Message in the Northwest." Yes, think of it as a bonus. Not just a housefire . . . a housefire with a message!
Environmental activist pleads not guilty Three days after his extradition from Canada, environmental activist and ex-fugitive Tre Arrow pleaded not guilty to arson and conspiracy charges in federal court Monday and was ordered held as a flight risk and public danger pending trial. Arrow, 34, who has legally changed his name from Michael Scarpitti, is charged in a 14-count federal indictment with helping to destroy concrete-mixing trucks at Ross Island Sand and Gravel Company in Portland in April 2001 and of firebombing logging trucks at Schoppert Logging Co. in Eagle Creek near Mount Hood in June 2001. He was returned to Portland Friday after fighting extradition for four years from a prison in British Columbia. Before his arrest in Canada, he was a fugitive from the FBI for 19 months. Dressed in a blue prison uniform, Arrow clasped his hands together, smiled and bowed in the courtroom as he was led to the defense table. He did not speak during the brief arraignment. U.S. District Judge Paul Hubel ordered him held pending a possible detention hearing. Through his attorney Paul Loney, Arrow requested that he be given a raw vegan diet in accordance with his religious beliefs, and a court official said that probably could be accommodated. Hubel asked that it be done as quickly as possible....
Are Wolves The Pronghorn's Best Friend? As western states debate removing the gray wolf from protection under the Endangered Species Act, a new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society cautions that doing so may result in an unintended decline in another species: the pronghorn, a uniquely North American animal that resembles an African antelope. The study, appearing in the latest issue of the journal Ecology, says that fewer wolves mean more coyotes, which can prey heavily on pronghorn fawns if the delicate balance between predators and their prey is altered. According to the study, healthy wolf packs keep coyote numbers in check, while rarely feeding on pronghorn fawns themselves. As a result, fawns have higher survival rates when wolves are present in an ecosystem. Over a three-year period, researchers radio-collared more than 100 fawns in wolf-free and wolf-abundant areas of Grand Teton National Park and monitored their survival throughout the summer. The results showed that only 10 percent of fawns survived in areas lacking wolves, but where coyote densities were higher. In areas where wolves were abundant, 34 percent of pronghorn fawns survived. Wolves reduce coyote numbers by killing them outright or by causing them to shift to safer areas of the Park not utilized by wolves....
Annual drilling restrictions take effect in Wyoming Annual restrictions that ban most energy-related activities within two miles of active sage grouse breeding areas on federal land are now in effect for the next three and a half months in Wyoming. Last Saturday marked the first day of the restrictions. The federal regulations hit Campbell County especially hard last year and are expected to have a significant impact this year. State and private lands where the regulations do not apply are increasingly drilled out, forcing coal-bed methane companies onto more federal land. In addition, last week, a federal judge decided to hold the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to a May 2009 deadline to decide whether to list the sage grouse as an endangered species, ignoring the service's request for an extension of the deadline. The decision will also require the service to do a new report on the bird, and give the public 60 days to comment on that report. The report is due in November....
BLM report says drilling would boost gas leakage A court challenge to increased coal-bed methane development on the Atlantic Rim has yielded a document that contradicts the Bureau of Land Management's public position on whether new drilling will cause more gas seepage from the ground. Erik Molvar, wildlife biologist with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, said court records resulting from a lawsuit filed by his organization and four other groups contains a document from the BLM about how drilling has boosted the number of methane gas seeps on the Atlantic Rim. The lawsuit was filed after the BLM approved a 2,000-well project on Atlantic Rim, on the eastern edge of the Red Desert in southern Wyoming. The BLM document, prepared by a petroleum engineer, states that when BLM officials toured the area, they found the level of activity at known methane gas seep sites had "increased dramatically since the commencement of coal-bed methane" development "in the immediate vicinity." BLM officials and others who have looked at the methane seeps agree that some seeps have been in the area for years. Dispute centers on the recent increased activity witnessed at those seeps....
Conflict seen in smelt rules Water users who benefit most from tapping the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta have been given an unprecedented role in drafting new rules to manage water diversions. Critics call it a "fox in the henhouse" situation that may further imperil the Delta, where experts believe water diversions have already contributed to a broad ecosystem collapse. The new draft rules, called a biological assessment, are being prepared in response to a court order last year. Federal Judge Oliver Wanger in Fresno declared existing rules inadequate to protect the threatened Delta smelt. He set a Sept. 12 deadline to rewrite the rules. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates one of two Delta water systems, is a defendant in the case. The bureau allowed water contractors to help write new diversion rules. Wanger, in his ruling, didn't specify who should rewrite the rules. The decision also applies to its co-defendant, the state Department of Water Resources, which operates the other diversion system, and its contractors....
Eminent domain hovers over Monument woman's property For 30 years, Georgia Ward has lived on 40 picturesque acres south of town, the perfect place for horses to roam and graze and drink from Monument Creek. But a Monument road could one day run through Ward’s land, dividing it in two and leaving the eastern two-thirds of it cut off and useless, Ward said. “Who would ever want it then?” Ward said last week. The town wants to connect Mitchell Road, which dead-ends at the south end of town, to Forest Lakes Boulevard, which curves north from Baptist Road west of Interstate 25. To make way for the road, the town plans to use eminent domain to seize an 80-foot-wide strip of land crossing Ward’s property. Eminent domain is a touchy subject among northern El Paso County landowners after the Lewis-Palmer School District in 2006 raised the specter of condemnation to obtain land for a new high school. The school district backed down in the face of fierce protests that included a threatened recall when the descendants of the pioneer family who still lived on the Wissler Ranch went public that they were being pressured to sell....
No Global Warming Crisis To see if all this makes any sense there are really four questions that all have to be answered "yes." 1) Are global temperatures rising? Surely, they were rising from the late 1970s to 1998, but "there has been no net global warming since 1998." Indeed, the more recent numbers show that there is now evidence of significant cooling. 2) But supposing that the answer to the first question is "yes," is mankind responsible for a significant and noticeable portion of an increase in temperatures? Mankind is responsible for just a few percent of greenhouse gases, and greenhouse gases are not responsible for most of what causes warming (e.g., the Sun). Over 100 leading climate scientists from around the world signed a letter in December stating: "significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming." In December a list was also released of another 400 scientists who questioned the general notion of significant manmade global warming. 3) If the answer to both preceding questions is "yes," is an increase temperature changes "bad"? That answer is hardly obvious. Higher temperatures could increase ocean levels by between seven inches and two feet over the next 100 years. Although some blame global warming for seemingly everything, according to others higher temperatures will increase the amount of land that we can use to grow food, it will improve people's health, and increase biological diversity. Even the UN says that a mild increase in temperature would be good for many regions of the globe. 4) Finally, let's assume that the answer to all three previous questions is "yes." Does that mean we need more regulations and taxes? No, that is still not clear....
Judge denies government bid to back out of sage grouse agreement A federal judge is holding the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to an agreement reached with environmentalists that sets a timeline for deciding whether to give the sage grouse special protection. The wildlife agency sought to back out of a stipulation that would have required it to determine by May 2009 whether to declare the species threatened or endangered. Government attorneys asked a federal judge in Boise to void the deal because it had not been approved by top agency officials. U.S. District Judge B. Linn Winmill denied the request yesterday, ruling the agreement is legally binding. A decision to grant Endangered Species Act protections to the sage grouse could affect energy development and urban growth across the West. Sage grouse habitat stretches across 11 Western states from California to North Dakota....
EPA approves Montana water standards The federal government has approved strict new water quality standards sought by Montana over fears that coal-bed methane drilling in neighboring Wyoming could pollute interstate rivers. Montana officials said Monday that the new rules would protect farmers from poor-quality water produced during exploration for coal-bed methane. Over the last decade, that industry has boomed just over the state line in Wyoming. "It's a good thing to protect the water for our state," Montana Department of Environmental Quality Director Richard Opper said of the new rules. They were approved by the Environmental Protection Agency in a letter dated Friday. But with a federal lawsuit over the issue still pending before District Judge Clarence Brimmer in Cheyenne, it was not immediately clear how far Montana could go in enforcing the standards. The energy industry and state of Wyoming joined forces to oppose the rules in court after they were adopted by Montana's Board of Environmental Quality in 2006. They argued Montana's actions threaten to dampen energy development in the Powder River Basin, which straddles the border of the two states....
Utah's national parks may soon allow firearms Visitors to Utah's national parks may soon be able to carry loaded firearms, despite the concerns of conservation groups that armed tourists could lead to more poaching. Under pressure from gun rights groups and about half of the U.S. Senate, the Interior Department has agreed to rewrite its regulations to comply with state laws. Utah, like much of the West, allows guns in state parks. So the change would make it legal for those traveling through Arches or Zions to take along a loaded gun. The current regulations require visitors to keep their guns unloaded and stowed. Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett joined 45 other colleagues, most of whom are Republicans, in asking Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to make the change. The Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service rules allow loaded guns, while the National Parks and U.S. Fish and Wildlife do not....
Don’t starve the Forest Service A whole lot of Rocky Mountain Westerners are concerned about President Bush’s recent proposal to cut the U.S. Forest Service budget. Out our way, the land is not an abstraction. The numbers in the Forest Service budget aren’t abstractions, either. They mean something real to our land and to our lives, and a cut of up to 2,700 people in an already beleaguered and understaffed agency is genuine cause for alarm. Now, the president’s proposed budget for 2009 asks this overworked agency to do even more with far less. It would allocate $4.1 billion to the agency -- $373 million less than this year’s budget and an 8 percent cut. This is senseless. Bush’s notion of slashing 17 percent from trail maintenance and $13 million from fuels reduction is both foolish and dangerous. By birthright, each of us has a stake in the Western lands, whether it’s 87 percent of Nevada or 28 percent of Montana. All told, an average of more than 50 percent of the land in these eight Western states is commonly owned, with Forest Service employees acting as our caretakers....
Charges filed in Quad accident The fact that no one was hurt in the accident is still on the minds of the locals. But some other issues are now being discovered. Craig Trinkle of the U.S. Forest Service is now being accused of driving under the influence when the accident occurred at the 25th running of the Mount Taylor Winter Quadrathlon. According to a criminal complaint filed in Cibola County Magistrate Court on Feb. 25, Trinkle is charged with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor or drugs. Trinkle was found to have alcohol, marijuana and several prescribed medications in his system at the time of the accident, according to a report filed by the New Mexico State Police. “We will just have to wait and see how that all ends up in court,” said District Ranger Chuck Hagerdon of the USFS. He added that Trinkle remains on medical leave. Hagerdon added that his office would be conducting its own review of the incident. Twenty three bicycles owned by competitors at the annual event were damaged in the accident when the vehicle plowed into them. The chaos ended when a large tree stopped the green truck that narrowly missed volunteers and crashed through bleachers....
Western Watersheds sues BLM over grazing, fence building Hailey-based environmental group Western Watersheds Project has sued the Bureau of Land Management, alleging the agency violated a 2005 settlement by authorizing reconstruction on 500,000 acres of federal land burned in last year's Murphy Complex Fire. The group wants a judge to block the agency from building fences and allowing livestock to graze on the habitat of sage grouse and pygmy rabbit - species under consideration for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. District Court documents, filed Monday in Boise, ask a judge to halt fence construction in an area managed by the agency's Jarbidge Field Office near Three Creek. The group also wants the court to prohibit livestock grazing on 20 allotments covered in the 2005 court-stipulated settlement and to block grazing on an additional 36 allotments until the agency prepares an environmental impact statement. Since the July fire, which burned 650,000 acres and destroyed more than 70 prime sage grouse breeding grounds, the agency has worked to rebuild 99 miles of burned fence, remove 12 miles of hazardous trees and plant more than 1,600 shrubs at a cost of about $25 million. The agency has authorized additional grazing in unburned areas and an additional 400 miles of fence repair while ignoring impacts to wildlife, Western Watersheds alleges....
The 'Pig Czar' Maj. Bobby Toon is known as the Pig Czar at the huge army post on Georgia's western edge. He has been assigned to help rid Fort Benning of its unwanted guests: an estimated 6,000 feral pigs that roam the 184,000-acre installation. The animals, common throughout Georgia, are known for tearing up woodlands and farms. They are aggressive foragers, gobbling up native vegetation and endangered species. "These pigs feed and breed," Toon said. "That's all they care about. I've been here off and on for 17 years, and I can never remember a pig population as big as it is now." Since July, more than 900 pigs have been killed. "These animals can smell a turkey egg three miles away," Toon said. "They're also a danger to tortoises and woodpeckers." About 2,000 people who are authorized to hunt on the post have been encouraged to go after the feral pigs. They must be active-duty, retired military or civilian workers at Benning and must have a license from the base. The post is offering a $40 bounty for every pig tail that's brought in....