Forest, Wildlife, and Climate News

Judge Molloy to step aside in 2011

The Western News, December 28, 2010 [here]

From the largest environmental crime trial in U.S. history to Forest Service logging projects to the status of gray wolves, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy’s decisions have certainly impacted Libby and Troy residents.

Molloy, 64, recently announced plans to take “senior status” in August – a term used in his profession as retiring from active service. Senior judges are periodically invited to hear cases heard by appeal courts.

U.S. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) announced the formation of a search committee to find Molloy’s replacement. A committee made up of attorneys Milton Datsopoulos of Missoula, James Goetz of Bozeman, Karla Gray, former state Supreme Court chief justice, Candace Fetscher of Missoula, and Martha Sheehy of Billings will recommend a candidate to Baucus, who will then in turn make a nomination to President Barack Obama.

Molloy has been at the center of some of the most controversial court rulings in state history. Among those were placing wolves in Montana and Idaho back on the endangered species list, halting various logging sales, stopping Forest Service plans to drop retardant on fires and blocking Montana and other states from opting out of federal gun laws. … [more]

New York Travelers Face Delays as Winds Slow Clear-Up

By Aaron Clark and Stuart Biggs, Bloomberg News, Dec 28, 2010 [here]

New York commuters and travelers face further disruptions today as winds hinder efforts to clear roads and runways following the heaviest December snows in six decades.

While the storm is moving slowly away, rising atmospheric pressure will continue to cause winds gusting to about 40 mph (64 kph) in some open areas, commercial forecaster AccuWeather Inc. said on its website. Winds may “quickly” cover roads with snow, according to a winter weather advisory from the National Weather Service late yesterday. …

More than a foot of snow fell across the northeast yesterday, with some areas in New Jersey getting more than 30 inches (76 centimeters), according to AccuWeather. Central Park had 20 inches of snow by 8 a.m. yesterday, the most for the month since 1948, the National Weather Service said.

New York City will have winds between 16 mph and 20 mph with gusts as high as 31 mph, according to a Weather Service forecast. Its winter weather advisory, covering a wider region, said gusts may hit 55 mph overnight before slowing to 40 mph by morning.

The storm reached New York the day after Christmas, one of the five busiest shopping days of the year. It may take retailers two weeks to recover from lost sales, said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group Inc., a research firm based in Port Washington, New York.

New York, which faces a $2.5 billion deficit in the $65 billion budget projected for next year, will be more affected by lost economic activity than clean-up costs, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a City Hall news conference on Dec. 26. The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

The snowfall was the fifth-largest on record for the city, Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said on Dec. 26. … [more]

Note: see also the fine discussion at Watts Up With That [here].

Note 2: And more on the way. Look for even more snow records to be broken across the Nation this coming weekend.

Note 3:

Wettest December in Los Angeles in 121 Years! Rain New Year’s Weekend?

Southern California Weather Notes, December 26, 2010 [here]

The strong cold front that swept through Southern California Christmas night resulted in 0.90 inch of rain at Downtown Los Angeles (USC), increasing December’s rainfall total to 9.67 inches. This makes December 2010 the wettest December in 121 years (since 1889), and the second wettest December since recordkeeping began in 1877. … [more]

Heller angered at wilderness scheme

By PETER URBAN, The Ely Times, December 27, 2010 [here]

WASHINGTON — Nevada Rep. Dean Heller issued a strong rebuke Thursday to plans by the Obama administration to make millions of undeveloped acres of land eligible for federal wilderness protection.

“This action is a blatant attempt by this Administration to circumvent Congress and create de-facto wilderness,” said Heller, a Republican. “If a portion of land is truly deserving of a wilderness designation, this Administration should not be afraid to engage Congress.”

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar [a neo-Nazi terrorist] said Thursday that his agency would review about 220 million acres of land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management to see if it should be given a new “Wild Lands” designation as a step toward wilderness designation.

The new policy replace the so-called “No More Wilderness” policy adopted in 2003 under former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Salazar said. That policy stated that new areas could not be recommended for wilderness protection by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and opened millions of acres in the Rocky Mountain region to potential commercial development. … [more]

Note: the 220 million acres in question is not wilderness. People have been resident on those lands for 10,000 years. Wilderness is a myth. Wilderness designation does not “protect” the environment; instead it encourages mass destruction via catastrophic holocausts.

People get on my case for calling pigs like Ken Salazar “neo-Nazi terrorists”, but in actual fact that is what he is. He wishes to destroy vast acreages and the economy of the West in order to drive the residents like cattle into concentration camps (it’s called “ethnic cleansing”). The pseudo-science behind the neo-Nazi schemes is completely racist both historically and currently. What else should I term racist thugs who wish to do harm to millions of people and millions of acres but neo-Nazi terrorists?

EPA seizes permit power from Texas on greenhouse gas emissions

By DAVE MICHAELS, The Dallas Morning News, December 24, 2010 [here]

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday that it will seize authority from Texas to regulate major emitters of greenhouse gases because Gov. Rick Perry and state regulators refused to implement the rules.

The move caps a long dispute between Texas and the EPA, which have clashed over the Obama administration’s push to regulate industrial sources of carbon dioxide emissions.

State officials complain the rules will unfairly punish Texas and its energy-hungry industries when they take effect Jan. 2.

While the EPA makes the rules, states implement most of the requirements of the Clean Air Act.

The most likely practical effect of the EPA awarding permits instead of the state is that companies will find it takes longer to acquire them, said Jeff Holmstead, an EPA assistant administrator from 2001 to 2005.

“EPA takes forever to do permits,” said Holmstead, the head of environmental strategies at law and lobbying firm Bracewell & Giuliani in Washington. “No state wants to be at EPA’s mercy.”

Other states have joined Texas in lawsuits challenging the EPA’s permit rule and its legal basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. But only Texas refused to set up the permit program.

Top Texas elected officials deny the scientific basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, Perry and others have warned that the rules will harm Texas’ dominant fossil-fuel industry.

The EPA wrote this week that 167 facilities in Texas – many of them power plants and oil refineries – would be subject to the permit program requirements. … [more]

EPA vows to enforce curbs on emissions

By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer, December 24, 2010 [here]

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it will regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and oil refineries next year in an attempt to curb global warming. …

EPA officials said they would set new performance standards requiring stricter pollution technology for electric utilities and oil refineries, which together account for almost 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

“We are following through on our commitment to proceed in a measured and careful way to reduce [greenhouse gas] pollution that threatens the health and welfare of Americans, and contributes to climate change,” EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said in a statement. … [more]

Note: Carbon dioxide and water vapor are not “pollution”. They are the fundamental building blocks of life. Without CO2 and H2O not only would you be dead, all Life on Earth would cease to exist.

What is pollution are the extreme neo-Nazi lies vomiting out of lesbo Lisa P. Jackson’s foul, ugly mouth.

CARB’s Carbon Capers

by S. Fred Singer, American Thinker, December 27, 2010 [here]

In a nearly unanimous vote, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) just approved a statewide cap-and-trade scheme to limit emissions of CO2 from six hundred major industrial plants, starting in 2012. Proposition 23 on the California ballot, defeated in November, was an attempt to at least delay the state’s Cap-and-Trade law, AB-32, until California’s record unemployment eased. However, the slanted description appearing on both the official Voter Guide and the ballot, written by then-State Attorney General Jerry Brown and his office, the well-funded “No-on-23″ campaign, and some very heavy media bias, had Californians believing that Prop. 23 would thwart efforts to curb air pollution — i.e., smog. So Prop 23 went down in flames, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs, and perhaps a million.

The “Cooler Heads” blog relates that the adopted regulation is more than three thousand pages long, but most of the details have yet to be worked out. CARB rushed to meet a December 31 deadline set by the 2006 legislation that authorizes CARB to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. In order to protect California businesses from out-of-state competition, CARB will (initially) allocate emissions credits (aka energy-rationing coupons) for free. The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is the only precedent for free allocation of carbon credits; it resulted in windfall profits for politically connected industries and higher electricity prices for consumers. … [more]

Note: Until 2010, Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) was North America’s only voluntary, legally binding greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction and trading system for emission sources and offset projects in North America. The effective final CCX Carbon Financial Instrument position was reached in November 2010 when the carbon credit price per metric ton of CO2 was between 10 and 5 US Cents, down from its highest value of 750 US Cents in May 2006. Trading reached zero monthly volume in February 2010 and remained at zero for the next 9 months when the decision to close the exchange was announced [here]. Small investors lost $billions in the aggregate.

The future of the forest can sustain communities and the trees, OSU’s College of Forestry dean says

By Eric Mortenson, The Oregonian, December 25, 2010 [here]

Hal Salwasser… the dean of Oregon State University’s College of Forestry holds a Biltmore measuring stick to federal forest policy and calls out his readings:

Not sustainable, he declares. Not sustainable on an environmental, economic or social basis. Federal proposals to thin sections of the vast federal holdings, and produce some logging and mill jobs for Oregon’s poor rural communities is a step in the right direction, but too “timid,” Salwasser says.

It’s time to reclaim the federal forests as a source of community wealth and health by making more timber available for logging. …

[F]ederal forest management is “dysfunctional,” Salwasser says. Among other problems, collaboration and innovation among industry, agency and conservation groups can be foiled by narrowly focused opponents who sit out the process but stall it with well-tossed lawsuits, he says. …

Federal forests have grown so dense from lack of management that they are environmentally unhealthy, and susceptible to catastrophic fire and insect damage, he says.

Secondly, forests are no longer economically sustainable because they don’t generate the capital — money from timber sales — necessary to pay for the stewardship they require.

Last, they are not socially sustainable because they no longer support the jobs and timber harvest revenue that once nourished Oregon’s rural towns, counties and school districts, Salwasser says.

The forests are capable of producing that kind of social wealth again if timber sales get back on track.

“They can,” he says. “Far more than they are right now.”

Oregon remains among the handful of regions best suited for growing trees for wood products, he says. Oregon still produces a fifth of the nation’s softwood lumber, despite the 2009 harvest from federal land being the lowest since the Depression. … [more]

Bribery and Graft abound as Reid attaches S.510 to clunkers

by Marti Oakley, the PPJ Gazette, December 20, 2010 [here]

It seems there is no stopping the nefarious Harry Reid (D) NV. With the country screaming no to the ill conceived S.510 Fake Food safety bill, Reid was successful in attaching the agricultural police state bill to a non-related bill and rammed this piece of garbage through the senate once again.

And where were those Republicans who got the message from voters that things needed to change? Well…they were right in there voting yes along with the Democrats. Even Senator Tom Coburn (R) OK., jumped on the band wagon and voted to pass this attack on food production and supply into law. Its just amazing what bags of corporate lobbying money can do to politicians.

S.510 Fake Food Safety bill was passed quickly late Sunday afternoon; a vote taken when the Senate could be assured few were watching or even aware that the vote on the criminalization of independent and family agriculture was taking place. Like rats scurrying across the deck of a sinking ship, senators lined up one by one to vote against the best interest of their districts and in favor of the industrialization of agriculture. And like rats, they hurriedly scurried away before their presence was detected. Rats are like that.

“Tonight we unanimously passed a measure to improve on our current food safety system by giving the FDA the resources it needs to keep up with advances in food production and marketing, without unduly burdening farmers and food producers,” Reid said in a statement.

This statement by Reid is an outright lie. He knows better than anyone else this bill has nothing to do with food safety. …

Reid went on to say that this was the first time in almost a century that the food safety system was updated. This is also a blatant lie. …

All S.510 will do is to unlawfully empower these agencies to openly construct a police state in agriculture with an eye on making the continuance of family and independent farming and ranching so untenable, so riddled with onerous regulations, reporting requirements, warrantless searches and seizure of private property, unnecessary licensing, property rights violations, and the abrogation of individual rights in order to benefit corporations and all the costs associated with these acts of aggression against independent agriculture, that many farmers and ranchers are already bailing out ahead of the FDA Gestapo plans. … [more]

See also the list of Senators bribed and the bribe amounts [here]

Department of Homeland Security goes off the deep end

Janet Incompetano plans to battle “climate change” in addition to terrorists

Watts Up With That, December 20, 2010 [here]

Not content to keep to the terrorism prevention mission for which they were founded, DHS’s Janet Napolitano now plans to battle a religious war of “climatic jihad”. … [T]he last time Washington DC took on weather in February 2010 (but not climate), the capital was shut down of course [here]. Now that’s “environmental justice”. Look for pat downs at airports soon for those carrying concealed carbonated beverages. …

See also:

Napolitano Says DHS to Begin Battling Climate Change as Homeland Security Issue

By J. Brady Howell, CNS News, December 17, 2010 [here]

At an all-day White House conference on “environmental justice,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that her department is creating a new task force to battle the effects of climate change on domestic security operations.

Speaking at the first White House Forum on Environmental Justice on Thursday, Napolitano discussed the initial findings of the department’s recently created “Climate Change and Adaptation Task Force.”

Napolitano explained that the task force was charged with “identifying and assessing the impact that climate change could have on the missions and operations of the Department of Homeland Security.” …

Arctic freeze to last another month

AA warns of ‘worst driving conditions imaginable’ for Christmas getaways

By Paul Sims, the Daily Mail, 18th December 2010 [here]

The Big Freeze will hold us in its grip for at least another month, forecasters warn.

Arctic conditions are expected to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond.

With temperatures expected to fall to -15c (5f), the Met Office said this is ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest December since records began in 1910. … [more]

Lunar eclipse and winter solstice to coincide, first time since the year 1378

by Dr. Tony Phillips, Watts Up With That, December 17, 2010 [here]

How often do you get to witness an event that has not been seen since the year 1378, over half a millennium, 632 years ago? Of course, weather will make or break the viewing, and it appears the much of the west coast of the USA will be socked in with a significant winter storm at that time.

For those that can see it, the moon will likely be seen as a deep coppery red…

See for yourself on Dec. 21st, the first day of northern winter, when the full Moon passes almost dead-center through Earth’s shadow. For 72 minutes of eerie totality, an amber light will play across the snows of North America, throwing landscapes into an unusual state of ruddy shadow.

The eclipse begins on Tuesday morning, Dec. 21st, at 1:33 am EST (Monday, Dec. 20th, at 10:33 pm PST). At that time, Earth’s shadow will appear as a dark-red bite at the edge of the lunar disk. It takes about an hour for the “bite” to expand and swallow the entire Moon. Totality commences at 02:41 am EST (11:41 pm PST) and lasts for 72 minutes.

If you’re planning to dash out for only one quick look -­ it is December, after all -­ choose this moment: 03:17 am EST (17 minutes past midnight PST). That’s when the Moon will be in deepest shadow, displaying the most fantastic shades of coppery red. … [more, with photos]

Eco-Diplomacy, The Chicago Way

Investors Business Daily, 12/06/2010 [here]

International Relations: Leaked embassy dispatches show an America bribing some and threatening others to get support for a climate change accord, revealing just how weak the case for such a treaty really is.

Sometimes it is worth seeing how the sausage — or in the case of climate change, the baloney — is made. While the WikiLeaks focus has been on the leaking of classified documents, the content of some of them is revealing.

David Carrington in Britain’s Guardian shows how the U.S., after failing to get a successor treaty to the failed Kyoto Protocol in Denmark, bribed, threatened and cajoled nations to get support for a “Copenhagen accord” under which nations would pledge to meet individual goals in the absence of a binding one-size-fits-all treaty.

In one instance, Hillary Clinton’s State Department, acting on a request from the CIA, sent a secret cable on July 31, 2009, seeking “human intelligence” from U.N. diplomats on which nations were being naughty and which were being nice on climate change and which might be making deals to circumvent Copenhagen goals.

We were essentially seeking dirt on nations opposed to the administration’s approach to fighting alleged global warming, and we were not above blackmail to get nations to comply with our position or threats that involved the cutting off of financial assistance promised to poorer nations said to be impacted by climate change. …

Confronted with a demonstrably cooling planet and a corrupt and fraudulent global climate-change bureaucracy, our government is reduced to bribes and coercion to cobble together a new agreement. In the absence of sound science and a rationale for committing global economic suicide, we are quite simply trying to make the world an offer it can’t refuse. … [more]

WikiLeaks Climate Revelations Spark Fury, Gloating

Written by Alex Newman, NewAmerican, 16 December 2010 [here]

After a series of secret U.S. cables released by WikiLeaks exposed American and European officials plotting bribery, blackmail, threats, and even espionage to advance their “climate” agenda, the reaction to the revelations around the world has been enormous.

Among the revelations: the U.S. State Department, acting on a request from the Central Intelligence Agency, ordered American diplomats to spy on officials and governments. The American regime was seeking compromising information, Internet passwords, credit-card numbers, DNA and biometric data, evidence of non-cooperation with international climate decrees, and much more. The cables also show U.S. and European Union officials discussing and using bribery and blackmail to get poorer regimes to sign on to the COP15 climate deal in Copenhagen.

The leaked diplomatic documents, which were publicized during the United Nations COP16 global-warming summit in Cancun, have caused a severe backlash against the tactics and negotiations among media outlets worldwide — on all sides of the debate. From statist publications and governments to talk-radio personalities and climate-change “skeptics,” everybody is seizing on the revelations. Except, of course, the embarrassed governments that were exposed. … [more]

U.S. agency’s smelt plan ‘arbitrary,’ judges rules

by Kelly Zito, SF Chronicle, December 14, 2010 [here]

A federal judge has ruled that a landmark 2008 environmental study laying the groundwork for controversial water cutbacks from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta relied on faulty science.

In his much-anticipated decision released Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to re-examine and rewrite its plan for the threatened delta smelt.

The agency’s solution for shoring up the collapsing species - namely cutting water exports to California cities and farms - is “arbitrary” and “capricious,” the Fresno judge wrote in his 225-page decision.

“Despite the harm visited on California water users, (the Fish and Wildlife Service) has failed to provide lawful explanations for the apparent over-appropriation of project water supplies for species protection,” Wanger wrote. “The public cannot afford sloppy science and uni-directional prescriptions that ignore California’s water needs.” … [more]

States Diverting Money From Climate Initiative

By MIREYA NAVARRO, New York Times, November 28, 2010 [here]

In New York, government officials found $90 million to pay for schools by dipping into money generated by a multistate greenhouse gas initiative.

In New Hampshire, the state took $3.1 million from a similar environmental fund. And in New Jersey, the government diverted its whole share: $65 million.

At least three financially troubled states have discovered in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade system, a convenient pool of money that can be drawn on to help balance state budgets.

In just over two years, the initiative, known as RGGI, has generated more than $729 million for the 10 states that have participated. Each state is supposed to use its share of the money raised to invest in renewable energy and to promote energy efficiency and consumer benefits, like programs that help low-income electricity customers pay their utility bills.

But the money is proving too much of a temptation for states not to use in other ways.

Critics say that diverting money from the fund for general spending, instead of using it on emissions control and energy savings, makes the initiative little more than a hidden tax on electricity. … [more]