Will drilling more wells in California help or hurt?

The government is spending $40 million in federal stimulus funds to pull water from underground aquifers in drought-stricken California, even as evidence is growing that the well-drilling boom could degrade the quality of water delivered to millions of residents. Farmers, conservationists and engineers are criticizing the Interior Department's plan to spend taxpayer money on digging more wells, saying the approach risks marring the environment. Canals buckle, aquifers collapse and drinking water turns saltier due to so much pumping, and studies show that the state's water supplies are dwindling. "We don't need any more straws going down there 'cause we're already doing a pretty good job of sucking it dry," says farmer Dan Errotabere, who has dug three wells as deep as 1,200 feet to irrigate his tomatoes, almonds, and garlic in recent years. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the government is targeting its well-drilling effort to serve remote communities and prop up California's agricultural economy, a $36 billion industry that grows nearly half the country's fruits, nuts and vegetables...read more

Stronger controls urged on chemicals in water

Citing the decline in frogs and rise of "frankenfish," a Bay Area environmental group filed a legal petition Monday for tighter federal standards on pollutants that disrupt the hormones of humans and wildlife. The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. Environmental Agency to beef up criteria under the Clean Water Act for pesticides, pharmaceuticals and other endocrine disruptors that leak through the water-treatment process and contaminate groundwater and drinking-water supplies. "We've found that a very small concentration of these chemicals can have profound reproductive effects," said Jeff Miller, a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco. Of particular concern is atrazine, the second most common herbicide in the world, said UC Berkeley biology professor Tyrone Hayes, who specializes in endocrine disruptors and their effect on frogs. Atrazine, which is banned in Europe, appears to affect estrogen production in frogs and other creatures, leading to fertility problems, cancer and birth defects, he said...read more

Both Sides Gird for Bruising Senate Debate Over EPA Amendment

Senate climate legislation advocates are bracing for a floor battle this month over a Republican campaign that they fear could drag down efforts to pass a major global warming bill before the real legislative debate can start. Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has the green light to offer an amendment on the Senate floor as soon as Jan. 20 that is aimed at halting U.S. EPA regulations on climate change. Democratic leaders agreed late last month to let Murkowski have the roll call during debate over separate legislation to raise the federal debt ceiling. Murkowski spokesman Robert Dillon said yesterday that the senator is still mulling several different ideas for what her proposal will actually say, let alone if she will force a vote now or wait until later as other options ripen. Dillon also acknowledged that the chances of actually stopping EPA global warming rules are minimal, given large Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill and the need for President Obama's signature. But the simple fact that the Senate could be forced into a challenging vote over climate change so soon into the new year means a full-blown whip operation is under way among environmentalists and their allies on Capitol Hill...read more

White House, EPA at Odds Over Coal-Waste Rules

The Obama administration is engaged in an unusual internal spat as the White House and Environmental Protection Agency tussle over how to handle millions of tons of waste from coal-fired power plants. Utility and environmental groups are watching the coal-ash dispute as an indicator of the administration's pliability on the regulatory front. The White House has already backed several new environmental initiatives that have drawn sharp reactions from industry, particularly EPA findings last month that designated carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant. But environmental groups are pointing to a flurry of industry meetings on the coal-ash issue as evidence that utilities and other companies are using a foothold within the White House to fight back against potentially far-reaching new rules. The office of President Barack Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, has held nearly 20 meetings with industry groups since October to discuss the potential impact of proposed EPA rules to treat coal ash and other coal byproducts as hazardous waste, according to White House records. Mr. Sunstein directs the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the White House Office of Management and Budget...read more

‘Climategate’ professor Michael Mann protected ‘to maximum extent’ by Penn State policy

It ultimately falls to one man to decide if we ever see headlines that shout: “Penn State Climate Prof Fudged Facts to Fetch Funding”, or perhaps “Nittany Lyin’: Penn State’s Mann on the Street.” Henry “Hank” Foley, the new vice president for research and dean of the graduate school, will hold professor Michael Mann’s academic future in his hands if an internal inquiry, now under way, sparks an investigation that finds Mann broke university policy. But results of Penn State’s internal Climategate probe may not come until Mann’s part of the globe really warms up, in May or June. In addition, you may never learn what really happened between Mann and other leading lights in the global warming movement. That’s because Penn State, like other universities, treats such inquiries as confidential personnel matters, protected by policy “to the maximum extent possible.” More surprising, the initial probe involves a committee of just three, all of whom are Penn State employees with a clear interest in preserving the reputation of a university ranked ninth in the nation in receiving government research and development grants. It may raise some eyebrows to know that no outsiders will monitor the proceedings...read more

Enviro groups try to block parts of California's green building code

Environmental groups are mounting a last-ditch effort to derail key elements of the state's first-in-the-nation green building code -- a major initiative of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration. The proposed code, likely to be adopted Tuesday, would slash water use, mandate the recycling of construction waste, cut back on polluting materials and step up enforcement of energy efficiency in new homes, schools, hospitals and commercial buildings statewide. "It is going to change the whole fabric of how buildings are built by integrating green practices into our everyday building code," said David Walls, executive director of the California Building Standards Commission. "The rest of the nation will be looking at what we have done." But critics say the rules fall short of rigorous standards adopted by Los Angeles, San Francisco and more than 50 California jurisdictions in league with the U.S. Green Building Council, a national nonprofit group of architects, engineers and construction companies...read more

Arguments set today in Osage land case

Oral arguments are set for Monday in a federal case that pits the Osage Nation against non-Indians in Osage County and against the state of Oklahoma. The Osage Nation is asking the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rule that Osage County and what the tribe considers to be the Osage Indian Reservation have the same boundaries. The county is Oklahoma's largest in land area. The Oklahoma Tax Commission contends the tribe's intentions may include applying its taxes and laws to everyone in Osage County. And a group of private organizations claim that a court ruling the tribe is seeking "will open the door to allow the nation to attempt to tax, regulate and otherwise assert sovereignty and jurisdiction" over non-Indian property. The coalition of organizations — whose members include businesses, farmers, ranchers and petroleum producers — contend such a ruling would endanger their continued existence.
"If a court were to determine that (non-Indian property) in Osage County were in fact part of a reservation of the (Osage) Nation," the non-Indian property owners "would be greatly disrupted," the coalition asserts...read more

Oregon fines BLM for Hyatt Lake sewage problems

Oregon environmental regulators have fined the U.S. Bureau of Land Management $5,000 for violations at a BLM-operated sewage treatment plant at the Hyatt Lake Recreation Area near Ashland. The BLM's permit allows it to apply reclaimed water land next to the treatment system's lagoons. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality said the federal agency used reclaimed water without adequately reducing the level of cloakroom bacteria on several occasions in 2007 and 2008. BLM also failed to monitor bacteria in July 2007, DEQ said, failed to monitor influent acidity from August to December 2008 and failed to submit required monthly wastewater discharge reports in July and August 2009. Oregonian

Incident with wolves has McGinnis Meadows couple on edge

Jan Bourdeau can point out each of her 15 cows and bulls by name. Some are named after old television shows – “The Dukes of Hazzard,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Little House on the Prairie” – while others have Gaelic names that stem from the breed’s Irish heritage. The furry black Dexters are about half the size of common breeds and are also friendlier than other cattle, Bourdeau says. Bourdeau and her husband, Jean, live on 70 acres at McGinnis Meadows, about 45 minutes south of Libby. With the snow relatively low this year, they had let their Dexters roam the pasture, although now the animals are kept in the coral close to the house. Since wolves killed Dolly – their milk cow named after the country music star – last week, the couple freezes in panic every time their dog yips outside. “We sit on pins and needles now,” Jan Bourdeau said. They attribute Dolly’s death to the Fish Trap Pack, the same group of wolves that killed two cattle on a ranch 10 miles from them in the fall of 2008. Bourdeau begins to cry when she describes running out to her cattle unarmed to discover Dolly alive but with most of her hindquarters missing...read more

Owner of horses given rubber bullets as deterrent for wolves

Federal wolf managers have issued rubber bullets to a landowner northeast of Jackson after wolves chased horses on private property. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service personnel made the announcement on the agency’s wolf Web site. On Dec. 31, Fish and Wildlife wolf managers investigated the incident, which involved four wolves, likely from the Antelope Pack, chasing young horses on a private pasture. Mike Jimenez, Fish and Wildlife Service Wyoming wolf recovery project leader, said the incident is nothing unusual. He also issued the landowner cracker shells, which are fireworks that can be fired out of a shotgun at the wolves. The rubber bullets are the same type that riot police use to control crowds of people. Jimenez said these nonlethal deterrents worked well with wolves from the same pack last year. Jimenez said the rubber bullets have a limited range; they can only be aimed effectively at targets up to about 50 yards. Wildlife managers say the 200 or so wolves that live in Wyoming outside Yellowstone National Park killed 20 cattle, 195 sheep and seven dogs in 2009. Thirty wolves were killed for preying on livestock during that time...read more

PETA Features Michelle Obama in Ad Without Her Consent

PETA, the animal rights group, is featuring Michelle Obama in an ad with Oprah Winfrey, Carrie Underwood and Tyra Banks without the first lady's permission. PETA's position is that it is honoring her -- and the other stars -- for not wearing fur. "We did not consent to it," Semonti M. Stephens, a spokesman for Mrs. Obama, told Politics Daily on Wednesday. The banners, posted at the Dupont Circle and Friendship Heights subway stations in Washington, are headlined "Fur-Free and Fabulous!" There are also two vans driving around Washington with a similar message, and serving hot soy cocoa. Stephens has said Mrs. Obama does not wear fur. PETA President Ingrid Newkirk told Politics Daily on Wednesday that using Mrs. Obama's image is "fair game" because the organization is "reporting a fact . . . that she is fur-free" -- as any news organization would...read more

New test may help address costly parasite in sheep industry

Researchers at Oregon State University and the University of Georgia have developed an improved, more efficient method to test for the most serious of the parasitic worms in sheep, a problem that causes hundreds of millions of dollars in losses every year to the global sheep and wool industry. This technology is now available, and will allow a faster, easier and less expensive way to test for the presence and quantity of Haemonchus contortus, or "barber pole" worms, a species that is very pathogenic to sheep, goats and llamas. This will help sheep ranchers deal with this problem more quickly and effectively, optimize their management practices, and sometimes avoid costly therapies. Findings about the new test were just published in Veterinary Parasitology, a professional journal. "This particular parasite is much more pathogenic in sheep than other worms, and previous methods to detect it were very labor intensive and often not commercially practical," said Michael Kent, an OSU professor of microbiology. "Now ranchers and veterinarians can test for this problem and target their management or treatment strategies much more effectively."...read more

Professional roper riding on the wings of a heart transplant

Ryan Rochlitz took long, loping cowboy strides toward the stable at the National Western Complex. With one arm, he tugged the reins of a burgundy-colored pony named Dragon. He toted a looped lasso over the other. The 30-year-old from Cheyenne looked no different than the 150 other ropers vying for spots in the National Western Stock Show, Rodeo & Horse Show, which begins Saturday. His gear, however, includes something no one in pro rodeo has had before: another person's heart. Rochlitz is believed to be one of only two athletes to compete professionally after a heart transplant, according to the Donor Alliance, which promotes and coordinates organ donations nationwide. The other is PGA golfer Erik Compton, who has had two heart transplants. Rochlitz counts himself lucky: Two of every 100,000 athletes between the ages of 12 and 35 die from heart ailments each year, according to a 2004 report of the International Olympic Committee. In 1997, Rochlitz was within two weeks of dying, he said, when the call came that there was a donor's heart — taken from a Denver 23-year-old killed in a motorcycle accident...read more

It's All Trew: The do's, don'ts and wonders of having pet turtles

My recent article about turtles brought numerous responses from avid turtle owners. I could not believe how many ladies had backyards full of turtles. First, I learned that as turtles reach a certain age, the male turtles have red eyes and reddish-tinted scales on their legs and skin. Male turtles are very aggressive, will bite the hand that feeds them and will attack another male turtle. Female turtles, at a certain age, acquire yellow eyes. They are gentle, will not bite unless threatened and can become great pets. It seems land turtles have a territory usually in the area where they are born. The size of the territory varies according to the amount of food available. By the way, turtles will eat almost anything, including hamburger meat, lettuce, tomatoes, almost any fruit, dog and cat food, cow feed, grain and fresh garbage from the kitchen. After awhile, they will come to a call or sound, and some will scratch on your back door for feeding. One longtime pet will enter the house, go to the refrigerator and rock back and forth begging for lettuce. I've wondered where land turtles get water out on the prairie, miles from the nearest pond. They acquire moisture from morning dew as the turtle moves through the grass. They can sense a rain coming 24 hours before and will dig a small hole to catch the rain...read more

The Evolution of Airport Security

Song Of The Day #219

With the special song/video yesterday, we'll have our toe tappers on Tuesday. This a.m.'s offering is two western swing instrumentals. The first is the 1937 recording of Blue Guitars by the Light Crust Doughboys followed by Jones Stomp recorded in 1940 by the Port Arthur Jubileers. Both are on the 23 track Jazz Greats - Western Swing.

Military Is Awash in Data From Drones

As the military rushes to place more spy drones over Afghanistan, the remote-controlled planes are producing so much video intelligence that analysts are finding it more and more difficult to keep up. Air Force drones collected nearly three times as much video over Afghanistan and Iraq last year as in 2007 — about 24 years’ worth if watched continuously. That volume is expected to multiply in the coming years as drones are added to the fleet and as some start using multiple cameras to shoot in many directions. A group of young analysts already watches every second of the footage live as it is streamed to Langley Air Force Base here and to other intelligence centers, and they quickly pass warnings about insurgents and roadside bombs to troops in the field. But military officials also see much potential in using the archives of video collected by the drones for later analysis, like searching for patterns of insurgent activity over time. To date, only a small fraction of the stored video has been retrieved for such intelligence purposes. Government agencies are still having trouble making sense of the flood of data they collect for intelligence purposes, a point underscored by the 9/11 Commission and, more recently, by President Obama after the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound passenger flight on Christmas Day...read more

And in the near future our domestic agencies will be "awash" in similar data. The Forest Service is already using them.

Conservationists Oppose Ted Turner’s Bid for Yellowstone Bison

Ted Turner's bid to get 74 wild bison from Yellowstone National Park is drawing stiff opposition from those who say the animals are being given up for private profit instead of conservation. Turner has offered to take the animals at the request of Montana's Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer. Federal officials earlier warned that the animals faced slaughter if no home was found. Turner is a longtime champion of bison conservation and owns an estimated 50,000 of the animals across the West. But rising criticism over his latest plan is putting the media mogul in an awkward position. His representatives insist he cannot take the animals without getting something in return. Turner would keep the bison five years and then return them to the state. As compensation, Turner would keep 90 percent of the animals' offspring, meaning he would gain an estimated 190 bison from a herd prized for its genetic purity...read more

The mini ice age starts here

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists. Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013. According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this. The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise. They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’. This challenge to the widespread view that the planet is on the brink of an irreversible catastrophe is all the greater because the scientists could never be described as global warming ‘deniers’ or sceptics...read more

Largest U.S. farm group rallies against climate bill

he largest U.S. farm group will oppose aggressively "misguided" climate legislation pending in Congress and fight animal rights activists, said American Farm Bureau Federation president Bob Stallman on Sunday. In a speech opening the four-day AFBF convention, Stallman said American farmers and ranchers "must aggressively respond to extremists" and "misguided, activist-driven regulation ... The days of their elitist power grabs are over." Stallman's remarks held a sharper edge than usual for the 6 million-member AFBF, the largest U.S. farm group and often described as the most influential. Its convention opens a string of wintertime meetings where farm groups take positions on public issues...read more