Saturday, February 3, 2007

Economic Policy: The budget deficit The Economist: "The interesting thing is that no one knows these happy facts. Democrats are still harping on budget deficits as if (a cynic would say 'because') they were a gigantic mess, rather than a shrinking problem. This is not an excuse for running deficits, of course; there is no reason that a prosperous nation should be borrowing money to run its government when the economy is booming. But America's budget deficit is small enough that it is now unlikely to be having any sort of measurable effect on the economy, and inflation and economic growth will quickly erode the value of recently accumulated debt. Mr Bush may leave a large number of problematic legacies for future generations, but the revenue shortfalls of recent years will not be noticed among them. Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the link. "2008 pres" 8:45:01 AM

Iraq TPM Muckraker: "Wow, this is grim. According to the just-released Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, political reconciliation is likely a bridge too far over the next year and a half. "The Sunnis remain 'unwilling to accept minority status' and believe the Shiite majority is a stalking horse for Iran. The Shiites remain 'deeply insecure' about their hold on power, meaning that the Shiite leadership views U.S.-desired compromises -- on oil, federalism and power-sharing -- as a threat to its position. Perhaps most ominously, the upcoming referendum on the oil-rich, multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk threatens to be explosive, as the Kurds are determined to finally regain full control over the city." "2008 pres" 8:40:07 AM

Giuliani for president? Political Wire: "In federal election filings, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) hasn't declared himself a Republican, Newsday reports...Said a campaign lawyer: 'It was the campaign's judgment that we didn't have to fill in that box.'" "2008 pres" 8:37:19 AM

Antarctic ozone hole breaks records The Cherry Creek News: "NOAA and NASA scientists report this year's ozone hole in the polar region of the Southern Hemisphere has broken records for area and depth. "The ozone layer acts to protect life on Earth by blocking harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun. The 'ozone hole' is a severe depletion of the ozone layer high above Antarctica. It is primarily caused by human-produced compounds that release chlorine and bromine gases in the stratosphere. "'From September 21 to 30, the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles,' said Paul Newman, atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. If the stratospheric weather conditions had been normal, the ozone hole would be expected to reach a size of about 8.9 to 9.3 million square miles, about the surface area of North America. "The Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Aura satellite measures the total amount of ozone from the ground to the upper atmosphere over the entire Antarctic continent. This instrument observed a low value of 85 Dobson Units (DU) on Oct. 8, in a region over the East Antarctic ice sheet. Dobson Units are a measure of ozone amounts above a fixed point in the atmosphere. The Ozone Monitoring Instrument was developed by the Netherlands' Agency for Aerospace Programs, Delft, The Netherlands, and the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland." "2008 pres" 8:35:29 AM

? for president? Political Wire: "From a new American Research Group poll in New Hampshire: In the Democratic presidential race, Sen. Hillary Clinton leads with 39%, followed by Sen. Barack Obama at 19% and John Edwards at 13%. No other candidate received more than 2 percent, and 21% of likely Democratic primary voters were undecided. On the Republican side, Sen. McCain leads with 27%, followed by Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani who are tied at 20% and Newt Gingrich who comes in at 11%. No other candidates draw more than 1% and 21% of likely Republican primary voters were undecided." "2008 pres" 8:32:48 AM

Blogging Christian Science Monitor: "The latest bomb scare to upset a major US city wasn't the handiwork of the Al Qaeda terror network. This time, it was the Cartoon Network. It all began Wednesday morning when a transit worker spotted a wired device on a girder underneath Interstate 93. After police found similar devices across the city, they shut down key roads and subway stations and called in federal officials with Homeland Security. It took most of the day before a worried public would learn that the suspicious devices were merely electronically lit signs depicting a cartoon character known as a Mooninite - and were part of a 'guerrilla marketing' campaign by Turner Broadcasting, gone awry. But even as security officials labored to get to the bottom of the incident, a parallel investigation was under way and open to all - in the blogosphere. Bloggers claim they were the first to suspect that the 'suspicious packages' weren't bombs. In fact, some had been blogging about the Mooninite marketing campaign for weeks, given that similar Mooninite signs had been sighted in other cities over the past couple of weeks [ed. emphasis ours]." Thanks to Doc Searls for the link. 8:30:34 AM

Politics and science 2020 Hindsight: "Boston.com reports that Vermont congressman Peter Welch is chairing a committee to look into government interference with science." "2008 pres" 8:27:58 AM

War on terror Juan Cole: "The big briefing planned by the Bush administration on supposed Iranian weapons shipments to Iraq had to be postponed because the presentation was judged exaggerated and unsubstantiated by Secretary of State Condi Rice and by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. So that raises the question of who was spearheading this presentation inside the Bush administration? Getting Iran is an obsession of the Neoconservatives at the American Enterprise Institute and their plants inside the administration, such as Iran-Contra felon Elliot Abrams in the National Security Council and David Wurmser and John Hannah on Cheney's rump Veep national security council. Many Neoconservatives and other sorts of wingnut have a secret alliance with the Marxist Islamist MEK terrorist organization, which feeds them allegations about Iran in Iraq just as Ahmad Chalabi used to with regard to the Baath regime in Iraq. "So have the Cheney Neoconservatives been at least somewhat reined in by a new Rice-Gates axis of Realists?" "2008 pres" 8:04:24 AM

Changes for Interbasin Compact Committee? The Interbasin Compact Committee is under review from Governor Owens, according to the Summit Daily News "reg". From the article, "A water projects task force set up by former Gov. Bill Owens has 60 days to come up with recommendations to resolve conflicts before Gov. Bill Ritter makes his own recommendation about its future, Natural Resource Director Harris Sherman told members Friday. Ritter has raised doubts about the effectiveness of the Interbasin Compact Committee set up in 2005 to review and recommend major water projects in Colorado. Sherman said Ritter is reviewing all major programs in every department since he took office in January." "colorado water" 7:22:10 AM

Snowpack Here's a short report about snowpack on the rainy side of Colorado from the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. From the article, "The 2007 water year began in October, and it looks like it's shaping up to be wetter than normal for Grand Junction, which has received 147 percent of its normal precipitation, Avery said. So far this water year, the sky has dumped 4.16 inches of precipitation on the city. But that's deceiving, he said, because the area had an exceptionally wet October, followed by a series of drier months. The above-average figures for the Grand Valley don't necessarily portend a great water year regionwide, because the water content, or snow-water equivalent, of the snowpack in the Colorado River Basin is at only 92 percent of normal. At this time last year, the snow-water equivalent in the basin was 127 percent of normal. Indeed, all Western Slope river basins are hurting for water, with snow-water equivalent only 81 percent of average in the Gunnison Basin and 78 percent in the San Juan River Basin, according to National Weather Service statistics. The hardest hit this winter is the Yampa-White River Basin, where snow-water equivalent is 68 percent of normal. Despite that much of the Western Slope's snowpack is water-starved to some degree, most of Colorado is no longer suffering drought conditions, according to the University of Nebraska's drought monitor. Moderate to severe drought conditions remain in extreme northwest Moffat County and in extreme northeast Colorado, while portions of Dolores, Montezuma, La Plata, Archuleta and Conejos counties are abnormally dry. Regional lake levels are also on their way down, dropping continuously since Christmas. The Bureau of Reclamation reports Blue Mesa Reservoir's surface elevation has dropped 10 feet since Christmas Eve, when the pool level was 7,492.44 feet. On Thursday, it was 7,482.34 feet. Likewise for Lake Powell, where the pool level has dropped more than four feet since Dec. 24. The reservoir's surface elevation then was 3,604.13 feet. On Thursday, the lake level was 3,599.43 feet." "colorado water" 7:18:37 AM

Fry-Ark water for southeast Colorado? From today's Pueblo Chieftain, "A plan to give communities east of Pueblo a little more water from the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, even if the Arkansas Valley Conduit is never built, passed a committee's scrutiny Thursday. The Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District allocations committee accepted a proposal by Greg Johnson of Colorado Springs that adjusts a similar plan it approved in October. The committee voted 5-1 to approve the concept, which will move to the full Southeastern board later this month for review and for action in March. "For months, the committee has struggled to find a way to reallocate water once allocated to the Colorado Canal in Crowley County. After Aurora bought farms along the canal in the 1980s, farmland was taken out of production. The district's 1979 court-decreed allocation principles require the district to reallocate Fry-Ark water taken from dried-up farmlands to non-irrigation uses, but do not say how that is to be accomplished." "colorado water" 7:08:58 AM

Global warming The Rocky Mountain News is running a story about the IPCC's report released yesterday and the possible effects of warming on Colorado. They write, "Average temperatures in the West could rise 7 degrees by the end of the century because of global warming, with drought-like conditions becoming the new norm, climate scientists said Friday. Some of the world's most advanced climate models suggest that Colorado precipitation levels will remain roughly constant as temperatures climb. If that happens, the state will get drier, with less mountain snow in the winter, lower stream flows in the summer, and an increased threat of wildfires... "For the first time - because of increased confidence in the more than 20 computerized climate models used in the latest assessment - IPCC included regional projections in its report, said Linda Mearns of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. The models show that the West will warm more than the global average. Winter warming will be 5.6 to 7.9 degrees, and summer temperatures will rise 5.7 to 8.5 degrees, Mearns said. Average year-round increase is about 7 degrees, said Mearns, one of the study authors. Those ranges assume modest attempts are made to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions in coming years. If nothing is done to curb emissions, Western warming could hit double digits by the end of the century, the models show... "A shrinking snowpack and earlier runoff leads to lower summer river flows, along with drier soils and forests, said Kevin Trenberth of NCAR, an author of the new climate report. Dry, stressed trees are more susceptible to wildfires, insects and diseases. Persistently dry soils can succumb to drought. Reduced summertime river flows are also bad news for irrigation farmers and lawn-watering homeowners, as well as fish and kayakers. Agriculture uses about 80 percent of Western water and relies heavily on summer irrigation... "A 2005 study by U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist Christopher Milly found runoff from Western rivers could drop 10 to 20 percent by 2050." More coverage from the Irish Examiner.com. They write, "A startk scientific report has removed the last remaining doubt that industrial, agricultural and domestic emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily from developed nations in Europe and the United States has caused the world's climate to change. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment has all but ruled out natural climate variability as a cause of the recent warming, leading to the conclusion that if greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked, global temperatures will soar." Earth & Sky has quotes from 25 scientists about warming. From the article, "Earlier this week, Earth & Sky wrote to a sampling of scientists asking, 'What would like to tell the American public, right now, about global warming?' Their answers follow. They leave little doubt. Earth is getting warmer. Humans are the most likely cause." "colorado water" 6:58:51 AM

Agreement over mercury emissions Colorado utilities have agreed to an 80% reduction in mercury emissions over the next few years, according to the Rocky Mountain News. From the article, "Colorado power plants have agreed to major cuts in mercury emissions under an agreement reached Friday among industry, environmentalists and local governments. Two of the state's biggest mercury sources - Xcel Energy's Pawnee power plant near Fort Morgan and the publicly owned Rawhide plant near Fort Collins - will slash emissions of the toxic metal by 80 percent by 2012. Most of the state's other coal-burning plants will make similar cuts by 2014... "Industry favored the approach backed by the Environmental Protection Agency. It allows cleaner plants to sell pollution credits to dirtier ones that wanted to delay the costs of adding emission controls. Environmentalists favored reductions as high as 90 percent across the board - and far sooner than a 2018 time frame under EPA's approach, which they complained was too lenient. The agreement puts Colorado among a large cluster of states that have rejected the mercury trading method promoted by the Bush administration. More than a dozen states have sued over the federal rules." "colorado water" 6:49:26 AM

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