Nations Appear Headed Toward Independent Climate Goals

Several world leaders on Tuesday gave the most decisive indication in months that they will work to revive floundering negotiations aimed at securing a new international climate pact. But the vision that President Obama and others outlined at the United Nations climate summit -- in which countries offered a series of individual commitments -- suggests that a potential deal may look much different from what its backers originally envisioned. Initially, many climate activists had hoped this year would yield a pact in which nations would agree to cut their greenhouse gas emissions under the auspices of a legal international treaty. But recent announcements by China, Japan and other nations point to a different outcome of U.N. climate talks that will be held in December in Copenhagen: a political deal that would establish global federalism on climate policy, with each nation pledging to take steps domestically...WPost

The Dog Ate Global Warming

Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December. Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared. Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense...If we are to believe Jones’s note to the younger Pielke, CRU adjusted the original data and then lost or destroyed them over twenty years ago. The letter to Warwick Hughes may have been an outright lie. After all, Peter Webster received some of the data this year. So the question remains: What was destroyed or lost, when was it destroyed or lost, and why? All of this is much more than an academic spat. It now appears likely that the U.S. Senate will drop cap-and-trade climate legislation from its docket this fall — whereupon the Obama Environmental Protection Agency is going to step in and issue regulations on carbon-dioxide emissions. Unlike a law, which can’t be challenged on a scientific basis, a regulation can. If there are no data, there’s no science. U.S. taxpayers deserve to know the answer to the question posed above...NRO

Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries

The oil industry has been on a hot streak this year, thanks to a series of major discoveries that have rekindled a sense of excitement across the petroleum sector, despite falling prices and a tough economy. These discoveries, spanning five continents, are the result of hefty investments that began earlier in the decade when oil prices rose, and of new technologies that allow explorers to drill at greater depths and break tougher rocks. More than 200 discoveries have been reported so far this year in dozens of countries, including northern Iraq’s Kurdish region, Australia, Israel, Iran, Brazil, Norway, Ghana and Russia. They have been made by international giants, like Exxon Mobil, but also by industry minnows, like Tullow Oil. Just this month, BP said that it found a giant deepwater field that might turn out to be the biggest oil discovery ever in the Gulf of Mexico, while Anadarko announced a large find in an “exciting and highly prospective” region off Sierra Leone. is normal for companies to discover billions of barrels of new oil every year, but this year’s pace is unusually brisk. New oil discoveries have totaled about 10 billion barrels in the first half of the year, according to IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. If discoveries continue at that pace through year-end, they are likely to reach the highest level since 2000...NYTimes

Senate rejects wildfire funds for D.C. parks

The Senate this week told the Obama administration to stop spending stimulus bill wildland firefighting money on urban parks in the nation's capital - the first time either chamber has voted to reject one of the administration's stimulus spending decisions. With fires raging out West, lawmakers said, it was ridiculous to spend firefighting money in Washington, which has no national forests and isn't considered a forest fire danger spot. In a voice vote Tuesday, senators voted unanimously to prohibit the U.S. Forest Service to spend any of its $500 million in wildland fire money in the city. "This is ridiculous, it is outrageous, and we should not stand for it," said Sen. John Barrasso, the Wyoming Republican who sponsored the amendment to the Interior Department spending bill. The money, part of the $787 billion stimulus bill, came from a $500 million fund the Forest Service was given for "wildland fire mitigation."...WashingtonTimes

Landowners, drillers debate split estates

With methane wells in her corner of the world, rancher Jessie Huffman spends considerable time worrying about what her gas-drilling neighbors are up to. She worries about springs drying up or water turning bad as gas rigs plumb mineral rights leased from the government. In the West, the federal government has made a practice of leasing its mineral rights to oil and gas companies without personally notifying surface landowners first. Such properties wherein the surface land is privately owned, but someone else or the federal government owns the rights to underlying minerals, are known as split estates. Surface owners are compensated when companies extract the minerals, but conflicts do occur, often starting with notification. "The landowner hasn't even been notified when a parcel under their property comes under lease," said Huffman, who ranches near Kirby in remote southeast Montana. "There definitely should be notice to the landowner when their property comes under lease." Now with more liberal-leaning energy policies on the table in Congress, Huffman and others are asking for advance notice and then some. She and other Montanans are in Washington, D.C., this week asking for better notice, mediation and even compensation whenever the government allows gas drilling beneath their land. They say socially and politically, the country's mood is right for tipping the scales in favor of surface landowners in oil and gas debates...BillingsGazette

Wyo DEQ decides against CBM water rule

The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality is backing away from its method of regulating water discharged from coal-bed methane wells after two reports by independent consultants questioned the practice. The method has been in use for a few years. The department decided that it was important enough to ask the state Environmental Quality Council, a governor-appointed board that approves the state's environmental rules and regulations, to approve the method as a formal rule when the council meets next week. On Wednesday, the department withdrew the proposed rule. The department announced that it will instead convene a panel of experts to recommend ways to monitor drainages and prevent problems with soil salinity. Coal-bed methane wells extract methane from coal seams by pumping large amounts of groundwater out of the coal and onto the surface. That depressurizes coal seams, causing methane to condense out of the groundwater much like bubbles of carbon dioxide inside a soda bottle that's been opened. Most coal-bed methane development in Wyoming occurs in the Powder River Basin, where ranchers grow hay for their cattle in bottomlands and irrigated pastures. Millions of gallons of extracted groundwater has caused many of the arid region's ephemeral streams to flow year-round. For some ranchers, that's helpful. Others have had problems with salt buildup in their hayfields. "It's damaging the soil and the vegetation and it's going to be really hard to reclaim those areas," said Jill Morrison, an organizer for the Sheridan-based Powder River Basin Resource Council...trib.com

Innovative water-rights program helping restore Northwest streams

Lawrence Martin remembers from his boyhood how Evans Creek flowed like an artery in the Rogue River Valley -- a deep, cold stream that gave life to salmon, steelhead and other species. Then the forests upstream were clear-cut in the 1950s. Floods scoured out the channel and stripped the land of its topsoil. And, one summer, the creek went dry. It happened again. And again. A few years ago, he realized he couldn't keep irrigating all of the 100 acres of hay he farmed. But today, that has changed. Evans Creek has a healthy flow again, thanks to an innovative program by the Bonneville Environmental Foundation that aims to recharge once-thriving Northwest streams. The program, which acts similar to carbon offsets, essentially pays water-rights holders to leave the water in the stream. Because rights are based on a use-it-or-lose-it model, many users continue to draw water even if they don't need it or their irrigation is ineffective -- rather than lose their claim. The program allows them to stop using the water without losing their rights -- while being compensated. Any company or individual can purchase water restoration certificates from the foundation to offset their water footprint. The water rights holders in turn are paid to leave water in the stream. Bonneville hopes to eventually expand the program across the nation...Oregonian

Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Soft Toilet Paper, Plus Exciting Video On TP Challenge

There is a battle for America's behinds. It is a fight over toilet paper: the kind that is blanket-fluffy and getting fluffier so fast that manufacturers are running out of synonyms for "soft" (Quilted Northern Ultra Plush is the first big brand to go three-ply and three-adjective). It's a menace, environmental groups say -- and a dark-comedy example of American excess. The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods. It has been slow going. Big toilet-paper makers say that they've taken steps to become more Earth-friendly but that their customers still want the soft stuff, so they're still selling it...WPost

If you want to support wildlife, support ranching

The best and most productive lands in Wyoming are in private ownership and have been for well over a century. These private lands support much of the wildlife we cherish so dearly. So before we go too far out of our way to cuss a rancher, let's be honest about the contribution his or her ranch makes to our hunting and fishing. Likewise, let's be honest about the alternative. As I look along the Colorado Front Range, I see hundreds of thousands of acres of land that were devoted to agriculture 20 years ago. Now, all of this land is covered up with houses. But that's not just a Colorado thing. Take a look at Star Valley not far from the Jackson Hole area, or the outskirts of Cheyenne or Gillette. If you care about wildlife, from moose to meadowlarks, ranches are better than subdivisions. I've come to the conclusion that ranchers aren't the only ones who have a stake in keeping ranchers in business in Wyoming. As a hunter and an angler, I've got a stake in that game, too. As open spaces in the West grow smaller and smaller, and as the average age of ranchers grows older and older, who's going to be the steward of all those private lands? I'd rather see a young family able to stay on the land and keep ranching than see that ranch become another subdivision, and that goes for whether I get to hunt on that place or not...HCN

World food output must rise 70 percent by 2050: FAO

The world will have to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 to feed a projected extra 2.3 billion people and as incomes rise, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization said Wednesday. Global cereals demand for food and animal feed is expected to rise to 3 billion tonnes by 2050 and more demand may come from the biofuels industry, the FAO said in a statement. Annual cereals output would have to grow by almost one billion tonnes from about 2.1 billion tonnes at present to meet the projected food and feed demand by 2050, the agency said. Meat output should increase by more than 200 million tonnes to reach 470 million tonnes in 2050, the Rome-based FAO said. "FAO is cautiously optimistic about the world's potential to feed itself by 2050," said FAO's Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem. But he added that climate change and biofuels demand would be the main challenges for world agriculture...Reuters

Retired Racehorse Lava Man Back in Training after Stem Cell Treatment

Lava Man, the former claimer who earned more than $5 million, has returned to training at Doug O'Neill's Hollywood Park barn. The 8-year-old gelding worked three furlongs in :36 flat Sept. 23 at Hollywood, his first official work. O'Neill, who claimed Lava Man for owners STD Racing Stable and Jason Wood, said Lava Man came into his Hollywood barn shortly after the Del Mar meeting closed Sept. 9. "He worked unbelievable and cooled out fantastic," O'Neill said. Lava Man was retired in late July 2008 after a sixth-place finish in the July 20 Eddie Read Handicap at Del Mar. "The intent was to retire him because he was off form," said O'Neill. "He went to Alamo Pintado, where they did a lot of diagnostics on him. They thought they could do some things to help with new technology." The Alamo Pintado Equine Medical Hospital in Los Olivos, Calif., works extensively in the area of stem-cell therapy. O'Neill said Lava Man underwent treatment, led by Doug Herthel, DVM, Alamo Pintado's founder. The gelding has been residing at Rich and Gaby Sulpizio's Magali Farms not far from the hospital. "They did stem cell therapy on Lava Man's ankles," O'Neill said. "Dr. Herthel said that he has the ankles of a 3-year-old. His ankles look phenomenal." Lava Man has been in training at Magali for about the last four months...The Horse

Critics: Elite Rangers Not Welcome at Texas Border

Rancher Mike Landry recently came upon a group of unarmed men dressed in camouflage burglarizing his guest house and stealing a truck from his 11,000 acres in Terrell County, rugged country bordering the Rio Grande in West Texas. A couple of shots over their heads from his hunting rifle kept nine of them, all Mexican citizens, in place until Border Patrol agents arrived. ''It has really gotten to be pretty spooky,'' said Landry, who has run cattle in the area for 29 years. Stories like Landry's seem to bolster Gov. Rick Perry's recent decision to send elite teams from the state's top law enforcement agency, the Texas Rangers, to remote borderlands to help them with security and deter a spillover of the gruesome drug-war violence plaguing Mexico. But Landry's situation never grew violent, and many other ranchers, sheriffs and politicians along Texas' 1,200 mile border with Mexico found the governor's announcement puzzling...AP

Administration Will Cut Border Patrol Deployed on U.S-Mexico Border

Even though the Border Patrol now reports that almost 1,300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border is not under effective control, and the Department of Justice says that vast stretches of the border are “easily breached,” and the Government Accountability Office has revealed that three persons “linked to terrorism” and 530 aliens from “special interest countries” were intercepted at Border Patrol checkpoints last year, the administration is nonetheless now planning to decrease the number of Border Patrol agents deployed on the U.S.-Mexico border. Border Patrol Director of Media Relations Lloyd Easterling confirmed this week--as I first reported in my column yesterday--that his agency is planning for a net decrease of 384 agents on the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal 2010, which begins on October 1...CNSNews

Song Of The Day #140

We'll close out the week with Slim Whitman singing his 1953 hit North Wind.

My version comes from his 6 disc box set Rose Marie by Bear Family Records. There is a remastered version on the 15 track Slim Whitman - Vintage Collections Series by EMI Records.

Army: There's no plan for Fort Carson to annex Pinon Canyon

An Army plan to have Fort Carson "annex" the 238,000-acre Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site for management and budget purposes never was approved for action, Army lawyers told ranchers opposing the expansion of the Army training ground Wednesday. The annexation plan was obtained by the Not 1 More Acre group as part of its successful lawsuit in U.S. District Court. The ranchers had challenged the 2007 environmental impact study the Army conducted to support training more troops, more often at Pinon Canyon. Two weeks ago, District Judge Richard Matsch set aside the Army study, saying it was severely inadequate - a decision that blocked the Army's plan to increase training schedules at Pinon Canyon. But the annexation plan caused alarm among foes of the Army's expansion efforts at Pinon Canyon. The plan called for the annexation to occur by this Oct. 1. Having successfully lobbied Congress two years ago to approve an annual ban on the Army spending money on the expansion, the ranchers argued the plan to make Pinon Canyon a "sub-installation" of Fort Carson was an effort to evade that congressional moratorium. "We were in federal court over the Army's failure to publicly disclose their unlimited expansion plans when we learned Fort Carson was secretly planning to take Pinon Canyon as its own," Mack Louden, a board member of the group, said Wednesday...PuebloChieftain

Federal wildlife service unveils new climate change policy

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday unveiled its new climate change strategy, which environmental groups have heralded as a significant advance in government policy. The proposed plan will provide a framework for incorporating climate change modeling into the service’s decisions, which include Endangered Species Act enforcement and management of the nation’s 540 national wildlife refuges. Tom Strickland, assistant secretary of the interior for fish, wildlife and parks, called climate change “the single greatest conservation challenge of the 21st century” in a teleconference Wednesday. Sam Hamilton, the new chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the policy is a fundamental shift toward anticipating effects of climate change on plants, animals, their ecosystems and the humans who rely on the same resources. The wildlife service plan calls for targeted monitoring of climate change impacts on fish and wildlife, developing “landscape conservation cooperatives” with private partners, and pursuing reforestation projects to increase the amount of carbon dioxide being removed from the air...Macon.com

An International Environmental Court?

For years American politics has been stirred by debate over whether the United States should join or cooperate with newly emergent instruments of multilateral law such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Kyoto Accords on climate change. To these ongoing controversies may soon be added another: should the United States support or oppose plans for an international court for the environment, empowered to punish states or private actors that damage irreplaceable natural resources or fail to protect imperiled species or ecosystems? At present, the debate over such a court is mostly being heard abroad - particularly in Great Britain, where a prominent lawyer named Stephen Hockman is spearheading a campaign that has won backing for the idea from various public figures such as Exchequer secretary Alistair Darling and Dame Judi Dench (Prime Minister Gordon Brown has also made vaguely favorable noises). At some point, however, we are likely to hear more about it on this side of the Atlantic. Already one international environmentalist group well known in this country, Friends of the Earth, has declared its backing for the concept, and others are likely to follow. If it follows the lines promoted by Hockman's campaign, an international environmental court would have the following characteristics...PointOfLaw

NASA data: Greenland, Antarctic ice melt worsening

New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode. British scientists for the first time calculated changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges. That's where warmer water eats away from below. In some parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003, according to a paper published online Thursday in the journal Nature. Some of those areas are about a mile thick, so they've still got plenty of ice to burn through. But the drop in thickness is speeding up. In parts of Antarctica, the yearly rate of thinning from 2003 to 2007 is 50 percent higher than it was from 1995 to 2003. These new measurements, based on 50 million laser readings from a NASA satellite, confirm what some of the more pessimistic scientists thought: The melting along the crucial edges of the two major ice sheets is accelerating and is in a self-feeding loop. The more the ice melts, the more water surrounds and eats away at the remaining ice...AP

U.N. climate meeting was propaganda: Czech president

Czech President Vaclav Klaus sharply criticized a U.N. meeting on climate change on Tuesday at which U.S. President Barack Obama was among the top speakers, describing it as propagandistic and undignified. "It was sad and it was frustrating," said Klaus, one of the world's most vocal skeptics on the topic of global warming. "It's a propagandistic exercise where 13-year-old girls from some far-away country perform a pre-rehearsed poem," he said. "It's simply not dignified." At the opening of the summit attended by nearly 100 world leaders, 13-year-old Yugratna Srivastava of India told the audience that governments were not doing enough to combat the threat of climate change. Klaus said there were increasing doubts in the scientific community about whether humans are causing changes in the climate or whether the changes are simply naturally occurring phenomena. But politicians, he said, seem to be moving closer to a consensus on climate change. "The train can't be stopped and I consider that a huge mistake," Klaus said...Reuters

Scientists explore link between dust, snowpack

By digging in the muck of Rocky Mountain ponds and lakes, scientists have been able to establish an accurate historic record of how human activities have increased the amount of dust falling on high country snowpack. Using satellite images and analyzing the dust, other researchers have been able to pinpoint specific sources, including off-road vehicle disturbances, livestock grazing and oil and gas development on the Colorado Plateau. “It's profound,” said researcher Tom Painter, director of the snow optics laboratory at the University of Utah. “Areas that are actively disturbed release 1,000 times more dust,” Painter said, adding that dust layers in 2009 caused the snow pack to melt 45 to 48 days earlier than normal. Areas that haven't been disturbed by human activities release very little dust, Painter said. “This has huge impacts on hydrology and snow cover,” Painter said, explaining that water managers have to account for changes in runoff as they plan the operation of reservoirs and diversions. Painter said research in the last few years has enabled scientists to look back about 5,000 years. Lake sediments show a dramatic increase in dust deposition coincided with the settlement of the West, beginning in the late 1800s, he explained. The dust levels stayed high through the early 1900s and then declined in the 1930s, when new grazing laws changed the way ranchers ran their herds of cattle. Overall, the amount of dust being released since the advent of human disturbance is 500 times greater than prior to the disturbance of the West, Painter said...DailyNews