BIA withdraws biological assessment for proposed Desert Rock power plant in NM

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has withdrawn its biological assessment for a proposed power plant in northwestern New Mexico, saying it has "significant concerns" about the impact of mercury and selenium on two endangered fish species in the San Juan River. BIA Director Jerry Gidner, in a letter Thursday to Fish and Wildlife Service Southwest Regional Director Benjamin Tuggle, said the decision will allow more time for coordination between Tuggle's staff, the BIA and the Environmental Protection Agency. It was the second review of federal decisions for the $3 billion coal-fired Desert Rock Energy Project on the Navajo Nation. In September, the Environmental Appeals Board in part granted a request by regional EPA officials who wanted to review parts of an air permit issued last year...read more

Copenhagen global climate deal falls short of expectations

The outline of a weak global climate agreement was last night concluded in Copenhagen, but it fell far short of what Britain and many poor countries were seeking and leaves months of tough negotiations to come. Following eight draft texts and all day talks between 115 world leaders, it was left to President Obama and Wen Jiabao of China to finally broker a political agreement. The deal - known as the Copenhagen accord - "recognises" the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2C but did not contain commitments to emissions reductions by countries to hit that goal. US officials spun the deal as a "meaningful agreement" but even President Obama admitted, "This progress is not enough," he said, "we have come a long way but we have much further to go". As expected earlier in the week it aims to provide $30 billion in funding for poor countries to adapt to climate change between 2010 And 2012, and $100 billion a year after 2020...read more

Russian Institute claims UK Scientists manipulated data they submitted, plus video

Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data. The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations. The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century. The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations. On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations. IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations. The scale of global warming was exaggerated due to temperature distortions for Russia accounting for 12.5% of the world’s land mass. The IEA said it was necessary to recalculate all global-temperature data in order to assess the scale of such exaggeration...read more

The Fiction Of Climate Science

Many of you are too young to remember, but in 1975 our government pushed "the coming ice age." Random House dutifully printed "THE WEATHER CONSPIRACY … coming of the New Ice Age." This may be the only book ever written by 18 authors. All 18 lived just a short sled ride from Washington, D.C. Newsweek fell in line and did a cover issue warning us of global cooling on April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported "many signs that Earth may be headed for another ice age." OK, you say, that's media. But what did our rational scientists say? In 1974, the National Science Board announced: "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end…leading into the next ice age." You can't blame these scientists for sucking up to the fed's mantra du jour. Scientists live off grants. Remember how Galileo recanted his preaching about the earth revolving around the sun? He, of course, was about to be barbecued by his leaders. Today's scientists merely lose their cash flow. Threats work...read more

Environmentalists Feel Sting of Cap and Trade

But perhaps the most fascinating irony of all is playing out inside the host Bella Center, where environmentalists and other nonprofit groups are getting a quick and brutal immersion in the “cap-and-trade” system that President Obama has proposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The problem here in Copenhagen is space: The Bella Center holds 20,000 people at capacity. The United Nations issued more than double that many credentials for the climate summit. So as more and more people arrived this week – delegates, environmentalists, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez – summit organizers started limiting who could come inside. They started by issuing “secondary passes” to nonprofits and requiring those passes for admission. The groups, commonly referred to as non-governmental organizations or NGOs, are free to trade the passes amongst themselves. The number of passes has declined each day. By some groups’ estimates, the entire U.S. environmental movement – consisting of 90 groups and thousands of people – will be down to fewer than 10 total passes by Thursday. If that plan sounds familiar, it should. It’s a super-compressed version of how Obama wants to reduce the emissions that scientists blame for global warming: declining cap, tradeable permits, near phase-out in the long term...read more

As Forest Deal Nears, New Index Maps Profit Potential in Trees

One of the major developments likely to come out of the Copenhagen climate talks tomorrow is a global agreement to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation of forests (REDD). A new index, launched yesterday in Copenhagen, now provides policymakers and investors with information on which of the world’s regions will give them the most bang for their buck when selecting forests for conservation. “The Forest Carbon Index (FCI) estimates the potential of every square kilometer of terrestrial land to generate carbon credits by either avoiding deforestation or by growing new forests,” said Erin Madeira, one of the architects of the project at Resources for the Future (RFF), a non-profit environmental organization in Washington, D.C. It maps out one-and-a-half-million grid squares, each 85.5 square kilometers in size. By compensating developing nations for not cutting down these trees, wealthy nations could cover many billions of tons of their required reduction in carbon emissions by 2020. The Index could help nations focus these efforts. It involves 20 geodatasets on national scales and six on subnational scales. These were mapped out each nation’s potential to attract foreign investment in its forests, based on possible profits and risks...read more

Progress is being made: the socialists are now interested in "profit potential". Of course it's governments that will profit, not some nasty capitalist.

Forest area bigger than Canada can be restored

Only one fifth of the world's forests remain but an area bigger than Canada could be restored without harming food production, a global alliance dedicated to restoring forests said on Thursday. A study by the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR), which includes the WWF, Britain's Forestry Commission and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), said a billion hectares of former forests, equivalent to six percent of the world's total land area, could be restored. Previous assessments estimated 850 million hectares had restoration potential. "This is a first go at identifying the total scale of this opportunity. The next stage is to work at a country level to identify what we would restore in the real world," Tim Rollinson, GPFLR chairman and director general of the British Forestry Commission told Reuters in an interview. Marginal agricultural land, where productivity was low, had the most potential for restoration, the study found...read more

GOP lawmakers work to stop EPA 'land grab'

As wrangling continues in Congress over expanding federal power over all U.S. waters, members of the Senate and House Western Caucuses have reiterated their opposition to the proposed Clean Water Restoration Act. Sending a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., 11 senators and 17 congressmen -- all Republicans -- stated the Restoration Act poses serious threats to states' sovereignty and rural economies. At the heart of their opposition is the bill's intent to update the Clean Water Act by removing the word "navigable" from waters under federal regulation. "The CWRA seeks to expand the jurisdictional sweep of the Clean Water Act, introduced in 1972, by granting the federal government authority over all U.S. waterways," the letter stated. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, said he is deeply concerned the legislation would restrict farmers' and ranchers' ability to make decisions about their own property. "The Clean Water Restoration Act is a big government land grab, pure and simple. And it is being forced on the agriculture community by people who don't know the first thing about crops or cows," he said. The Western legislators contend there is overwhelming opposition to the bill in their home states, citing concerns over job loss and regulatory overreach...read more

Clean water legislation biggest federal power grab ever

Do Americans want to allow federal regulation over all inland waters? How about granting virtually unlimited regulatory control or all "wet areas" within our state to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers? That is exactly what will happen if current federal legislation (S787)--masquerading as the Clean Water Restoration Act--is passed by Congress. This Act seeks to expand the jurisdictional sweep of the Clean Water Act, introduced in 1972 by granting the federal government authority over all U.S. waterways, which, in truth, makes it the largest federal water/power grab in U.S. history. Most notably, S787 removes the requirement that regulated waterways be navigable as originally stated in the Clean Water Act. The deletion of that word will allow all inland waters to be subject to federal legislation --i.e., wet areas, including mudflats, sand flats, isolated wetlands, meadows, sloughs, and even lands over which rainwater passes, plus manmade impoundments for water (stock ponds, ditches, water filtration ponds and more). Our federal government has been accused often of overreaching in its regulations, but nothing that has happened in our nation's history can surpass this effort to push the limits of federal powers...read more

Forest Service to bolster protections for fish, wildlife habitat

After striking out the last three times, the U.S. Forest Service is embarking on another rewrite of the basic planning rule that balances logging against fish and wildlife and clean water in national forests. Echoing his speech earlier this year laying out a greener future for the national forests, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced from Washington, D.C. that work is starting on an environmental impact statement to take the place of the most recent one produced by the Bush administration that was struck down by a federal judge. "Our national forests and grasslands are great natural treasures that we must conserve and restore for the benefit of future generations," Vilsack said in a statement. "Developing a new planning rule provides the opportunity to manage national forests and grasslands for the benefit of water resources, the climate and local communities." Besides the traditional issues of timber production, fish and wildlife habitat, and clean water, the process would also consider global warming, restoration of unhealthy forests, and the growth of wildfires on the 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands, he said...read more

Wanted by Alaska lawmakers: PR firm to fight species listings

The Alaska Legislature is paying for a conference and public relations campaign to persuade Congress to limit the Endangered Species Act. The Legislative Council is asking public relations firms to bid between now and Jan. 4 on the effort, which lawmakers appropriated $1.5 million to fund. The PR pros are to assemble a panel for an "Alaska Conference on Climate Change," after suggesting how the panel debate should be framed. They'll launch a public relations campaign "based on the conclusions reached by the conference panel," according to the Legislature's request for proposals. The goal of the project is figuring out how to reverse what the Legislature calls negative economic effects from listings based on climate change, like the designation of the polar bear as a threatened species. "The (PR firm's) main role will be taking information from the conference and other information gathering efforts and trying how to initiate a grass-roots movement, for lack of a better term. For going to Congress and asking for some reform changes," said Eddie Grasser, a legislative employee who is organizing the PR effort. He said Alaska will be working with other states seeking the same changes to the Endangered Species Act. "It's not challenging the idea that maybe we need to do something about climate change but challenging the idea that the (Endangered Species Act) is the tool to use in doing that," he said...read more

BLM to field offices: Mark fences for sage grouse

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is telling its field offices to mark certain fences and guy wires to make them more visible to sage grouse, sharp-tailed grouse and lesser prairie chickens. Studies have shown that barbed-wire fences can be deadly when these bird species fly into the fences without seeing them, although the number of birds killed depends on a variety of factors. Mortality tends to be a problem in places where large numbers of birds congregate frequently near fences. Land managers and environmentalists are particularly concerned about the sage grouse, a hen-sized game bird that is being considered for protection under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service expects to decide early next year whether to list the sage grouse as endangered. A directive from the BLM in Washington, D.C., earlier this month tells state BLM offices to evaluate fences for their risk to sage grouse and to place markers on the fences where appropriate. The directive also tells state offices to consider marking new fences as they're installed on BLM land. In addition, the directive says guy wires for wind turbines and meteorological towers on BLM land should be marked...read more

Tester forest bill heard on Capitol Hill

A plan to require 7,000 acres to be logged annually in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest for the next 10 years met some skepticism on Capitol Hill Thursday. Tester and supporters of his bill say the requirement would provide struggling lumber mills with logs and reduce the number of beetle-killed trees in the forest, which includes the Madison Mountain Range southwest of Bozeman. However, members of the Obama administration and environmentalists told a Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee that the provision could set a dangerous precedent for forest management and prove difficult to implement. But Tester and a coalition of loggers and conservationists who support the legislation defended the mandates. Tester said pine-beetles had turned the Beaverhead-Deerlodge forest into a “sea of red,” and said more forest needs to be opened up to logging if Montana’s lumber mills are expected to stay open. Along with the logging requirements, the bill would create 677,000 acres of wilderness, most of it in Southwest Montana, garnering the support of many major environmental groups...read more

Feds may OK helicopter landings in Frank Church Wilderness

The U.S. Forest Service could today approve a request from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to land helicopters in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness to put radio collars on wolves. Approval of the landings in such a remote area would be certain to rile environmental groups, many of whom Regional Forester Harv Forsgren visited personally within the last week to inform of his intentions. It’s the second time since 2005 that Fish and Game has proposed the landings. Under federal law, it’s already allowed to fly over the area. The state is asking to touch down up to 20 times in the wilderness to put collars on up to 12 wolves. At least one official has argued the department has authority to land, even without federal permission. Forest Service regional spokeswoman Erin O’Connor said Thursday afternoon that Forsgren expects to issue his decision today. If he approves the state’s request, he would then authorize Salmon-Challis National Forest Supervisor Bill Wood to issue the permit for the landings. Even brief touchdowns aren’t acceptable to a number of conservation groups watching the issue. John Robison of ICL and Jessica Ruehrwein of the Sierra Club said they’re concerned about what kind of precedent approval would set. Groups also worry what the state will do with the information it gathers, though they want to keep the discussion from being swallowed up by the wolf debate...read more

Group to sue over trout deaths linked to fire retardant

An environmental group announced plans to sue local and state fire agencies after studies linked the death of roughly 50 endangered steelhead trout to fire retardant dropped during the Jesusita fire. Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a nonprofit group based in Oregon, filed yesterday a 60-day notice of intent to sue the Santa Barbara County Fire Department and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, along with the U.S. Department of Commerce. Officials with the group said they hope the threat of a lawsuit will encourage agencies to establish regulations and practices to prevent endangered steelhead from being killed by fire retardant...read more

Forest Service isn't listening on travel rules

The off-roaders picketing the Shasta-Trinity National Forest headquarters last Friday complain that its "travel management plan" is nothing more than a bureaucratic exercise designed to close off public lands - no matter the opinion of the public. Does the U.S. Forest Service really have to work so hard to prove them right? It would be nice to be able to defend the agency, which started restricting all-terrain vehicle use in part due to legal pressure from environmentalists worried about abuse of sensitive lands, and which has the challenging task of managing the forests with the interests of all 300 million of their owners in mind. Unfortunately, recent road-closure decisions are so at odds with plain sense and have so little to do with the stated aims of the travel management plans that it's hard not to conclude that the ultimate goal is simply to make recreation such a pain in the neck for off-roaders - whether they're harming the landscape or not - that they give up and go away...read more

That Tap Water Is Legal but May Be Unhealthy

The 35-year-old federal law regulating tap water is so out of date that the water Americans drink can pose what scientists say are serious health risks — and still be legal. Only 91 contaminants are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, yet more than 60,000 chemicals are used within the United States, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates. Government and independent scientists have scrutinized thousands of those chemicals in recent decades, and identified hundreds associated with a risk of cancer and other diseases at small concentrations in drinking water, according to an analysis of government records by The New York Times. But not one chemical has been added to the list of those regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act since 2000...read more

Hype is More Dangerous than Chemicals in the Water

Officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are working hard to hype drinking water risks as they ask Congress to expand their authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). They have the assistance of sensationalist journalism at The New York Times, whose main source of information appears to be left-leaning activists at the Environmental Working Group (EWG). In a story on this topic today, The New York Times claims that data collected by EWG from EPA databases between 2004 to present shows that there is a growing body of evidence that individuals are increasingly exposed to dangerous chemicals in our water supply. Their arguments are wrong for myriad reasons. First, the idea of a national drinking water crisis is off the mark. Most of the U.S. water supply is quite safe—among the safest in the world. And consumers have a variety of options that include bottle water—whose record is even better than tap—when problems in their public water systems do emerge. More importantly, exposure to chemicals does not translate into significant risks. Humans are exposed to hundreds of thousands of trace chemicals every day—man-made and natural—without ill effect. Risks result not from low exposures but from relatively high ones to certain chemicals over decades...read more

Anti-Takings Abuse Bill Introduced in the House

As we approach the five year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s notoriously poorly-reasoned Kelo v. New London decision, the lack of meaningful legislative progress on curbing eminent domain abuse has been disheartening. While legislation was previously introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. John Sullivan (R-Okla.), it was nixed by an unfriendly committee referral, and proponents of property rights and economic liberty have little to show for their efforts on this front. The good news is that Congress is making another go at eminent domain reform. The Strengthening the Ownership of Private Property Act of 2009 (STOPP Act, H.R. 4288), introduced by Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.), would prevent any federal economic development funding–regardless of the federal agency or program–from being disbursed to state or local governments that seize private property in order to transfer it to another private party or for another private party’s benefit. While the legislation exempts takings for utilities, roads, pipelines, and right-of-way companies, it would–if passed–cut off significant funding to governments found to have engaged in Kelo-style eminent domain abuse...read more

BLM employee arrested, accused of soliciting sex with 14-year old online

Worley, 51, is a federal employee accused of using work computers to send obscene material and solicit sex with a 14-year old girl. He is a Vancouver, Washington resident, and according to the Department of Justice, works for Portland’s U.S. Bureau of Land Management as a human resources manager. The government has accused Worley of trying to lure a 14-year old girl he met online into having sex with him. He was charged with two Internet crimes. 1) Sending obscene images of himself to a minor; and (2) trying to persuade the girl to have sex with him. Oregonian reporter, Bryan Denson, reported Worley's plan was foiled by the girl's stepfather, who learned she had been contacted on the teen dating site www.tagged.com by “Magical Tongue”, according to government court papers. Denson further reported that Worley repeatedly sought topless photos of the girl and at one point sent her a short video of himself masturbating, the government alleges...read more