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Saturday, February 2, 2008
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The Moderate Voice: "Heading towards Super Tuesday, Pakistan has dropped off the radar of the primaries although it is the most likely place for the next civil war between Islamic terrorists and civilians. It might even become a cause of war with India and near total loss of American influence in the entire region. Terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists supported by the Taliban and Al Qaeda has spread almost all across Pakistan. Terrorists killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and have attacked Air Force and Army personnel near military bases. Nearly half of Pakistani territory from Baluchistan to the North West Frontier is unstable and extremists seem to fear the army less."
"2008 pres"
6:52:11 PM 
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Juan Cole: "Two women set off separate suicide bombs in two markets in Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 91 persons and wounding a similar number. Contrary to what this AP squib implies, the bombings suggest neither that 'al-Qaeda' is running out of men nor that it is desperate. Women were used because they would be less likely to be closely searched, in a society where gender segregation and female honor and chastity are important values. The story that the women had Downs syndrome seems unlikely to be true; you wouldn't trust a sensitive terror plot to someone without their full faculties."
"2008 pres"
6:41:18 PM
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Captain's Quarters: "Ron Klain wonders what happens when bloggers speak truth without power in his New York Times blogpost. Klain focuses on the Democratic race, where blogger favorites Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, and Chris Dodd (whom he doesn't mention) all sank without much of a fight."
Coyote Gulch has been reminding candidates that blogging cannot replace glad-handing on the stump, large amounts of cash and a clear message. We political junkies love 'em though. For cash strapped local campaigns however a blog is often the only vehicle available to disseminate video and get press coverage.
"2008 pres"
6:38:52 PM
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Don Surber crunches the Super Tuesday numbers and comes up with, "Much thanks to Real Clear Politics for the numbers I just crunched. Even though they seem exact, they are ballpark numbers. On Tuesday, I look for McCain to get 2 delegates for every delegate Romney gets."
Captain's Quarters: "Amidst all of the stormy polling clouds, a little ray of sunshine has broken over the Romney campaign. Rasmussen shows Romney slowly climbing into a tie nationwide with John McCain in its daily tracking poll. It also shows John McCain gaining strength at the same time."
Andrew Sullivan: "National Gallup: She now leads by seven."
Pat Buchanan (via Andrew Sullivan): "If you've got a Hillary and McCain race, you've got a third option: That's the pistol on the bed table."
Political Wire: "A new Insider Advantage poll in Alabama shows Sen. Hillary Clinton edging Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential race, 46% to 40%. On the GOP side, Sen. John McCain narrowly tops Mike Huckabee, 37% to 35%, with Mitt Romney way back at 14%."
Political Wire: "Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain each hold a better than 2-to-1 edge over their closest presidential rivals entering the Illinois primary, according to a new Chicago Tribune poll, "but many voters say they're still undecided or could change their mind before casting a ballot Tuesday." Among Democrats, Obama leads Sen. Hillary Clinton, 55% to 24%. Among Republicans, McCain leads Mitt Romney, 43% to 20%, with Mike Huckabee at 15%."
Don Surber: "Rush to judgment edition. STORY OF THE WEEK: John McCain wins Florida and looks to win the Republican nomination. If it is McCain, Ann Coulter said not only will she vote for Hillary, not only will she campaign for Hillary, but she will have Hillary's baby. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity smiled at the ratings this will deliver them during the February sweeps."
"2008 pres"
6:22:36 PM
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Unbossed: "Democrats in the House and Senate have introduced sweeping legislation to address a number of workplace problems - the Civil Rights Act of 2008 (H.R. 2159/S. 2554). According to the American Civil Liberties Union: 'The Civil Rights Act of 2008 will restore basic civil rights protections that have been weakened over the years by the courts and offer Americans a remedy if they feel their rights have been violated.'"
"2008 pres"
6:19:52 PM
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Here's a report about runoff from agriculture and the changes it is causing to the Mississippi River, from WebWire. From the article:
Midwestern farming has introduced the equivalent of five Connecticut Rivers into the Mississippi River over the past 50 years and is adding more carbon dioxide annually into its waters, according to a study published in Nature by researchers at Yale and Louisiana State universities. "It's like the discovery of a new large river being piped out of the corn belt," said Pete Raymond, lead author of the study and associate professor of ecosystem ecology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. "Agricultural practices have significantly changed the hydrology and chemistry of the Mississippi River."
The researchers tracked changes in the levels of water and bicarbonate, which forms when carbon dioxide in soil water dissolves rock minerals. Bicarbonate plays an important, long-term role in absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Oceans then absorb the excess carbon dioxide and become more acidic in the process. "Ocean acidification makes it more difficult for organisms to form hard shells in coral reefs," said R. Eugene Turner, a co-author of the study and a professor at the Coastal Ecology Institute at Louisiana State University. The researchers concluded that farming practices, such as liming, changes in tile drainage and crop type and rotation, are responsible for the majority of the increase in water and carbon dioxide in the Mississippi River, which is North America's largest river.
Raymond said that the research team analyzed 100-year-old data on the Mississippi River, warehoused at two New Orleans water treatment plants, along with data on precipitation and water export. "A notable finding is that changes in farming practices are more important than changes in precipitation to the increase in water being discharged into the river," he said. The researchers used their data to demonstrate the effects of excess water on the carbon content of the river, and to argue that nutrients and pollution in the water are altering the chemistry of the Gulf of Mexico. Besides Raymond and Turner, the other authors of the study, "Anthropogenically Enhanced Fluxes of Water and Carbon from the Mississippi River," are Neung-Hwan Oh of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and Whitney Broussard of the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University. A grant from the National Science Foundation funded the research.
"2008 pres"
10:03:41 AM
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The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has unanimously approved legislation to implement the federal share of the Platte River Cooperative Agreement , according to The Environment News Service. From the article:
The legislation, passed out of the committee as HR 1462, will authorize the Secretary of Interior to proceed with the program and includes $157 million to carry it out. The cost will be shared 50/50 by the states and federal government. The states will provide $30 million annually and credit for contributions of water or land for the purposes of implementing the program. The Secretary of the Interior, acting through the Commissioner of Reclamation, is authorized to modify the Pathfinder Dam and Reservoir with the state of Wyoming. The 54,000 acre-feet capacity of the Pathfinder Reservoir, which has been lost to sediment but will be recaptured by the project, may be used for municipal, environmental, and other purposes, the bill provides. The sponsors of the legislation, Senators Ben Nelson and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, and Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar of Colorado, applauded the committee's action as a major step towards final passage of the bill. "The Platte River recovery is absolutely critical to improving and maintaining habitat for threatened and endangered species while allowing water use and development along the Platte River. Our legislation will ensure that this plan is able to be fully implemented and we are pushing the Senate to act on it as soon as possible," said Senator Nelson, a Democrat. "With the Committee's unanimous action, the road is clear for Senate passage of this bill." "When a program is developed that protects water users' rights and creates wildlife habitat protection it is a win-win for every one involved. The Platte River recovery plan does just that," said Senator Salazar, a Democrat and a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "The program allows continued water use and development along the Platte that is critical to our farmers, ranchers and local communities and I am proud to support this sound conservation bill." "This legislation aims to address one of the most pressing needs in the West, ensuring that the Endangered Species Act does not stop our most precious natural resource from flowing," said Senator Allard, a Republican. "I have been an outspoken critic of the Endangered Species Act, but when I see a program designed to work with people to find real solutions I support it. This program is a good step forward in recovering endangered species and still providing the necessary water to meet the demands we face in the Platte River region." "This is important news for Nebraskans," said Senator Hagel, a Republican. "This is the kind of intra-state cooperation that will be necessary to address future water challenges in Nebraska and across the U.S."
More coverage from The Grand Island Independent. They write:
The legislation, which the committee approved on Tuesday, will authorize the secretary of the interior to proceed with the program and includes $157 million to carry it out. The cost will be shared 50/50 by the states and federal government. Through the program, the states will provide benefits for the endangered and threatened species as well as land, water and scientific monitoring and research to evaluate benefits of the program...
Ron Bishop, manager of the Central Platte Natural Resources District, said much of the recovery program has been at a standstill in anticipation of the federal funding, such as the land and water acquisition portions of the plan. "It has been sitting, waiting whether the administration is going to fund the federal part of the proposal," Bishop said. He said Nebraska's share is about 40 percent that has either already been contributed or will be an in-kind contribution once the project gets rolling. Two of the big goals of the recovery plan are to increase flows in the Platte River and create new habitat to benefit the four endangered and threatened species the program is designed to protect. The species are the endangered interior least tern, whooping crane, pallid sturgeon and the threatened piping plover. Once the recovery project gets going, Bishop said, much of the habitat that's part of the project will be located and acquired in the Central Platte NRD. Bishop said the plan proposes to acquire 10,000 acres of new habitat. The proposed area is between Lexington and Chapman. He said the land will be purchased from willing sellers, but increasing river flow may involve further regulating water use along the Platte River.
On Friday night Whooping Cranes were seen dancing in the streets. Music provided by the Piping Plovers.
More Coyote Gulch here.
"2008 pres"
8:43:31 AM
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It's getting harder and harder to find people that pooh pooh humankind's effect on the planet's warming. Most that still argue that the warming is natural and not effected by greenhouse gases belching from power plants and automobiles are doing so from a political or economic point of view rather than a scientific point of view. Several scientists in California are now saying conclusively that the current low flows in the Southwestern U.S. along with reduction in snowpack and earlier runoff is the result of human pollution, according to The UPI. From the article:
California scientists said humans are to blame for diminishing water flow in the western United States. Researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Scripps Institution of Oceanography said the Rocky Mountains have warmed by 2 degrees Fahrenheit and the snowpack in the Sierras has dwindled by 20 percent over the past 20 to 30 years due to human-caused climate change. The research, published in the online edition of Science Express, looked at air temperatures, river flow and snowpack over the last 50 years, the Livermore lab said Friday in a release.
"It's pretty much the same throughout all of the western United States," said so-author Tim Barnett of Scripps. "The results are being driven by temperature change. And that temperature change is caused by us."
More coverage from Science Blog:
The team scaled down global climate models to the regional scale and compared the results to observations over the last 50 years. The results were solid, giving the team confidence that they could use the same models to predict the effects of the global scale increase in greenhouse gases on the Western United States in the future. The projected consequences are bleak. By 2040, most of the snowpack in the Sierras and Colorado Rockies would melt by April 1 of each year because of rising air temperatures. The earlier snow melt would lead to a shift in river flows.
As for the warming, with the existing greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, the Earth will continue to warm for the next 80-100 years. "For someone who has seven grandchildren, that scares the hell out of me," Barnett said. "I've seen the future and I don't like it." Other Livermore contributors included Celine Bonfils, Govindasamy Bala and Art Mirin.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Here's an article about sustainable living from The Mother Earth News.
Here's a recap of day one of CSU's climate change teach-in from The Fort Collins Coloradoan. From the article:
Climate change will affect some of the world's weakest and often those who are not major contributors to the problem, a Colorado State University professor said Wednesday, the first day of a two-day climate change "teach-in." "The people least responsible for climate change will be the first to feel the effects," said Lori Peek, assistant professor in the department of sociology at CSU. The teach-in was part of a national program called Focus on the Nation, where more than 1,100 universities participated in providing education about global warming.
Children, who make up more than half the population of countries most at risk for climate change, can easily fall prey to disease and natural disasters on the increase with warming temperatures, Peek said. Impoverished people and countries also are less likely to be able to access resources to mitigate the effects of climate change...
Climate change might not raise food prices, but it could damage water quality, said James Pritchett, an associate professor of agriculture and resource economics at CSU. Pritchett said some climate models suggest that parts of Colorado could see more precipitation and, in turn, more crops. That could also mean farmers apply more fertilizer, which, combined with an increase in storms, could run off into rivers and lakes and sully water quality in rivers, lakes and aquifers.
More coverage from Canada.com. They write:
Large tracts of land and ancient vegetation that has not seen the light of day in 1,600 years have been liberated from ice caps on Baffin Island, confirming the unprecedented scale of climate change underway in Canada's North. The "current warming exceeds any sustained warm episode in at least the past 1,600 years," reports a U.S. research team that is dating the landscape reappearing as the island's ice disappears.
While scientists and Inuit have noted the recent Arctic heat wave is extraordinary, the emerging moss, plants and rocks shows just how extraordinary. It exceeds the medieval warm period between 1000 and 1200 AD when Norse settlers took up farming in Greenland and Inuit hunters fanned out across the Canadian north, the researchers say. "It is very unambiguous," says lead author Gifford Miller, of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at University of Colorado, noting how the moss, plants, lichens and rocks carry a chemical signature showing how long they have been under ice. They reveal some of the ice caps formed initially about 350 AD and persisted through the medieval warm period until they melted away, many them in the last few years, says Miller. The vanishing ice caps will be featured on the cover of Geophysical Research Letters this month. "The fact that they are now melting like crazy is even more remarkable because it is occurring in the face of a long-term trend that should result in cooling," says Miller, explaining how less solar radiation has been hitting the Arctic in summer months for the last 3,000 years because of a natural cycle that affects orientation of the sun and Earth. "The modern warming really is unusual," he says. "From a millennial perceptive, it's unprecedented."
The hundreds of small ice caps on Baffin Island's interior plateau are tiny compared to much bigger and older ice fields in Greenland and Canada's North. But Miller says they are "very special" because they, and the things they covered, are such good indicators of climate change. Unlike bigger ice fields that typically flow, slide and scrape along valleys and hills, the small ice caps do not disturb the underlying ground as they recede. "They never erode at their base because they are not moving, and as they melt the landscape is revealed," says Miller, who first visited the Baffin plateau in the 1980s. He says he was "shocked" to realize a few years ago that one ice cap he had visited has vanished completely, and dozens of others were on the way out. He then pulled together a team to take a closer look. They analyzed aerial and satellite images dating back to 1949 that show Baffin Island's interior plateau has lost more than half of its 150 square kilometres of ice caps in the last 50 years...
Radiocarbon dating of the samples shows the plateau has had ice caps for most of the past 2,800 years, and they are now the smallest since at least 350 AD. They also show how the ice caps expanded significantly after 1280 and 1450 AD, when huge tropical volcanoes hurled ash and gas into the atmosphere. One "tantalizing" theory, says Miller, is that the eruptions tipped the climate system into a period of prolonged cooling that resulted in the Little Ice Age that persisted until the 1800s. The centuries-long cold snap saw Arctic sea ice and glaciers expand to the point that Inuit hunters became more dependent on seal than whales for food and Greenland farms were abandoned. The warming now underway correlates with rising greenhouse gas emissions, chief among them carbon dioxide produced by burning of fossil fuels that trap heat in the atmosphere. Human impacts "are now on a par with these other types of natural phenomenon that drive the climate system," says Miller, stressing the need to curb human emissions to try slow the warming.
"2008 pres"
8:17:00 AM
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© Copyright 2009 John Orr.
Last update: 3/15/09; 2:05:23 PM.
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