There is no report from Scott Base, Antarctica today.
The weather at Glacier Bay National Park (Crystal Wind Chime) is:
46 °F / 8 °C
Overcast
Windchill:
40 °F / 4 °C
Humidity:
66%
Dew Point:
36 °F / 2 °C
Wind:
15 mph / 24 km/h from the SSE
Wind Gust:
22 mph / 35 km/h
Pressure:
29.87 in / 1011 hPa
Visibility:
10.0 miles / 16.1 kilometers
UV:
0 out of 16
Clouds:
Scattered Clouds 2200 ft / 670 m
Overcast 3600 ft / 1097 m
(Above Ground Level)
end
Sunday, February 12, 2006
The true reality of preservation and conservation isn't 'tree hugging' it's survival in balance with Earth
Canada to Shield 5 Million Forest Acres
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
HARTLEY BAY, British Columbia, Feb. 4 — In this sodden land of glacier-cut fjords and giant moss-draped cedars, a myth is told by the Gitga'at people to explain the presence of black bears with a rare recessive gene that makes them white as snow.
The Raven deity swooped down on the land at the end of an ice age and decided that one out of every 10 black bears born from that moment on would be bleached as "spirit bears." It was to be a reminder to future generations that the world must be kept pristine.
On Tuesday, an improbable assemblage of officials from the provincial government, coastal Native Canadian nations, logging companies and environmental groups will announce an agreement that they say will accomplish that mission in the home of the spirit bear, an area that is also the world's largest remaining intact temperate coastal rain forest.
A wilderness of close to five million acres, almost the size of New Jersey, in what is commonly called the Great Bear Rain Forest or the Amazon of the North will be kept off limits to loggers in an agreement that the disparate parties describe as a crossroads in their relations.
The agreement comes after more than a decade of talks, international boycott campaigns against Great Bear wood products and sit-ins in the forests by Native Canadians and environmentalists, who chained themselves to logging equipment.
The process has already inspired similar efforts to save the Canadian boreal forest, to the north, and suggestions that the agreement could be a model for preservation in the Amazon and other threatened forests.
Scientists say the agreement should preserve not only the few hundred spirit bears and other black bears, but also one of the highest concentrations of grizzly bears in North America as well as unique subspecies of goshawks, coastal wolves, Sitka blacktail deer and mountain goats.
"It's like a revolution," said Merran Smith, director of the British Columbia Coastal Program of Forest Ethics, an environmental group. "It's a new way of thinking about how you do forestry. It's about approaching business with a conservation motive up front, instead of an industrial approach to the forest."
Under the agreement, the loggers will be guaranteed a right to work in 10 million acres of the forest, which some environmentalists criticize. But they will be obliged to cut selectively: away from critical watersheds, bear dens and fish spawning grounds, negotiators said.
"There's a new era dawning in British Columbia," said Gordon Campbell, the province's premier. "You have to establish what you value, and work together. This collaboration is something we have to take into the future, and it is something the world can learn from."
As a sign of new Native power gained in recent court cases, many areas that will be preserved or selectively logged have been chosen based on the oral tradition of Native groups and the opinions of their elders. These include areas with cultural significance like ancient cemeteries, or those with medicinal herbs and cedars big enough to make totem poles, canoes and long houses.
If the federal government agrees, more than $100 million will also be raised by governments and foundations to start ecotourism lodges, shellfish aquaculture and other environmentally sustainable economic activities for the 25,000 people who live in the region.
"Now we can manage our destiny," said Ross Wilson, chairman of the tribal council of the Heiltsuk, one of the Native nations involved. "Without this agreement, we would be going to court forever and we would have to put our children and old ladies dressed in button blankets in the way of the chainsaws," he added, referring to the ceremonial dress worn in past protests.
Among the supporters of the agreement are some of the biggest players in Canadian lumber and paper, including Western Forest Products, Interfor and Canfor.
"It's a cultural shift," said Shawn Kenmuir, an area manager for Triumph Timber, which has already forsaken old clear-cut practices and begun consulting with the Gitga'at before cutting on their traditional lands. "We've started the transition from entitlement to collaboration."
The forest represents a quarter of what remains of coastal temperate rain forests in the world.
Because 15 feet of rain can fall in a year, the Great Bear has never suffered a major forest fire. That has allowed some of the tallest and oldest trees on earth to thrive, including cedars more than a thousand years old.
An estimated 20 percent of the world's remaining wild salmon swim through the forest's fjords, including coho and sockeye, whose spawning grounds were threatened by erosion caused by past logging. Largely intact because of its remoteness, the forest contains an abundance of wolverines, bats, peregrine falcons, marbled murrelet sea birds and coastal tailed frogs.
The ecological richness is immediately apparent to the few people who visit. Within minutes of a recent helicopter visit to Princess Royal Island, in the heart of the rain forest, a group of visitors saw a pack of six gray and black wolves, a seal and numerous bald eagles and swans.
"Look at the forest move," said Marven Robinson, 36, a Gitga'at guide, as eagles glided through the moist air and the wolf pack played hide-and-seek with the visitors along a channel of diaphanous water. "As long as there is a spirit bear, we're going the right way."
The efforts to save the rain forest began a decade ago, as lumber companies that had already cut most of the old-growth forest around British Columbia, by far Canada's richest forestry province, began moving into the Great Bear.
A deluge of postcards and demonstrations by groups like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace at shareholders meetings and retail outlets pressed American, Japanese and European hardware chains to shun products from the area.
By 1999, when the Home Depot announced it would phase out sales of wood from the Great Bear and other endangered old forests, some lumber companies were shifting their approach, agreeing to work with the environmentalists.
MacMillan Bloedel, before it was acquired by Weyerhaeuser, broke ranks with the industry and promised in 1998 to phase out clear-cutting on the British Columbia coast. Other companies gradually fell into line.
"The customer doesn't want products with protesters chained to it," said Patrick Armstrong, a consultant who served as a negotiator for the lumber companies. "We're dealing with old-growth forests with charismatic wildlife."
Once Mr. Armstrong sat at the opposite side of the bargaining table from the environmentalists, but now he works closely with them. "This needs to be celebrated — it's a big, big deal," he said. "Everyone had a greater interest in resolving the problems than continuing the conflict."
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
HARTLEY BAY, British Columbia, Feb. 4 — In this sodden land of glacier-cut fjords and giant moss-draped cedars, a myth is told by the Gitga'at people to explain the presence of black bears with a rare recessive gene that makes them white as snow.
The Raven deity swooped down on the land at the end of an ice age and decided that one out of every 10 black bears born from that moment on would be bleached as "spirit bears." It was to be a reminder to future generations that the world must be kept pristine.
On Tuesday, an improbable assemblage of officials from the provincial government, coastal Native Canadian nations, logging companies and environmental groups will announce an agreement that they say will accomplish that mission in the home of the spirit bear, an area that is also the world's largest remaining intact temperate coastal rain forest.
A wilderness of close to five million acres, almost the size of New Jersey, in what is commonly called the Great Bear Rain Forest or the Amazon of the North will be kept off limits to loggers in an agreement that the disparate parties describe as a crossroads in their relations.
The agreement comes after more than a decade of talks, international boycott campaigns against Great Bear wood products and sit-ins in the forests by Native Canadians and environmentalists, who chained themselves to logging equipment.
The process has already inspired similar efforts to save the Canadian boreal forest, to the north, and suggestions that the agreement could be a model for preservation in the Amazon and other threatened forests.
Scientists say the agreement should preserve not only the few hundred spirit bears and other black bears, but also one of the highest concentrations of grizzly bears in North America as well as unique subspecies of goshawks, coastal wolves, Sitka blacktail deer and mountain goats.
"It's like a revolution," said Merran Smith, director of the British Columbia Coastal Program of Forest Ethics, an environmental group. "It's a new way of thinking about how you do forestry. It's about approaching business with a conservation motive up front, instead of an industrial approach to the forest."
Under the agreement, the loggers will be guaranteed a right to work in 10 million acres of the forest, which some environmentalists criticize. But they will be obliged to cut selectively: away from critical watersheds, bear dens and fish spawning grounds, negotiators said.
"There's a new era dawning in British Columbia," said Gordon Campbell, the province's premier. "You have to establish what you value, and work together. This collaboration is something we have to take into the future, and it is something the world can learn from."
As a sign of new Native power gained in recent court cases, many areas that will be preserved or selectively logged have been chosen based on the oral tradition of Native groups and the opinions of their elders. These include areas with cultural significance like ancient cemeteries, or those with medicinal herbs and cedars big enough to make totem poles, canoes and long houses.
If the federal government agrees, more than $100 million will also be raised by governments and foundations to start ecotourism lodges, shellfish aquaculture and other environmentally sustainable economic activities for the 25,000 people who live in the region.
"Now we can manage our destiny," said Ross Wilson, chairman of the tribal council of the Heiltsuk, one of the Native nations involved. "Without this agreement, we would be going to court forever and we would have to put our children and old ladies dressed in button blankets in the way of the chainsaws," he added, referring to the ceremonial dress worn in past protests.
Among the supporters of the agreement are some of the biggest players in Canadian lumber and paper, including Western Forest Products, Interfor and Canfor.
"It's a cultural shift," said Shawn Kenmuir, an area manager for Triumph Timber, which has already forsaken old clear-cut practices and begun consulting with the Gitga'at before cutting on their traditional lands. "We've started the transition from entitlement to collaboration."
The forest represents a quarter of what remains of coastal temperate rain forests in the world.
Because 15 feet of rain can fall in a year, the Great Bear has never suffered a major forest fire. That has allowed some of the tallest and oldest trees on earth to thrive, including cedars more than a thousand years old.
An estimated 20 percent of the world's remaining wild salmon swim through the forest's fjords, including coho and sockeye, whose spawning grounds were threatened by erosion caused by past logging. Largely intact because of its remoteness, the forest contains an abundance of wolverines, bats, peregrine falcons, marbled murrelet sea birds and coastal tailed frogs.
The ecological richness is immediately apparent to the few people who visit. Within minutes of a recent helicopter visit to Princess Royal Island, in the heart of the rain forest, a group of visitors saw a pack of six gray and black wolves, a seal and numerous bald eagles and swans.
"Look at the forest move," said Marven Robinson, 36, a Gitga'at guide, as eagles glided through the moist air and the wolf pack played hide-and-seek with the visitors along a channel of diaphanous water. "As long as there is a spirit bear, we're going the right way."
The efforts to save the rain forest began a decade ago, as lumber companies that had already cut most of the old-growth forest around British Columbia, by far Canada's richest forestry province, began moving into the Great Bear.
A deluge of postcards and demonstrations by groups like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace at shareholders meetings and retail outlets pressed American, Japanese and European hardware chains to shun products from the area.
By 1999, when the Home Depot announced it would phase out sales of wood from the Great Bear and other endangered old forests, some lumber companies were shifting their approach, agreeing to work with the environmentalists.
MacMillan Bloedel, before it was acquired by Weyerhaeuser, broke ranks with the industry and promised in 1998 to phase out clear-cutting on the British Columbia coast. Other companies gradually fell into line.
"The customer doesn't want products with protesters chained to it," said Patrick Armstrong, a consultant who served as a negotiator for the lumber companies. "We're dealing with old-growth forests with charismatic wildlife."
Once Mr. Armstrong sat at the opposite side of the bargaining table from the environmentalists, but now he works closely with them. "This needs to be celebrated — it's a big, big deal," he said. "Everyone had a greater interest in resolving the problems than continuing the conflict."
Greed over conservation is not even conceptualized in Canada but is very much a priority with this current administration.
The Princess Royal Island of British Columbia, Canada. Besides being a beautiful picture of a vast and untouched wilderness, it is a fascinating picture of the 'snow line' of the mountains.
Bush Administration Details $1B Land Sales
By MATTHEW DALY
The Associated Press
Friday, February 10, 2006; 6:53 PM
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration on Friday detailed its proposal to sell more than 300,000 acres of national forests and other public land to help pay for rural schools in 41 states.
The land sales, ranging from less than an acre to more than 1,000 acres, could total more than $1 billion and would be the largest sale of forest land in decades.
Western lawmakers immediately objected, saying the short-term gains would be offset by the permanent loss of public lands. Congress would have to approve the sales, and has rejected similar proposals in recent years.
Forest Service officials say the sales are needed to raise $800 million over the next five years to pay for schools and roads in rural counties hurt by logging cutbacks on federal land. The Bureau of Land Management has said it also plans to sell federal lands to raise an estimated $250 million over five years.
Dave Alberswerth, a public lands expert with the The Wilderness Society environmental group called the plan a billion-dollar boondoggle to privatize treasured public lands to pay for "tax cuts to the rich."
"This is not going to be politically acceptable to most people," Alberswerth said.
But Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who directs forest policy, said the parcels to be sold are isolated, expensive to manage or no longer meet the needs of the national forest system. The administration expects to have to sell only about 200,000 of the 309,000 acres identified Friday to meet the $800 million goal, he said.
"These are not the crown jewels we are talking about," Rey said in an interview. The public can review the land parcels that are up for sale on the Forest Service's Web site, Rey said; Maps of just four national forests were posted as of Friday, but Rey said all the properties should be posted by month's end.
The public will have until late March to comment on the proposed sales.
"This is a reasonable proposal to take a small fraction of a percentage of national land which is the least necessary and use it for those in need and achieve an important overarching public purpose," Rey said.
The proposed sell-off would total less than half of 1 percent of the 193 million-acre national forest system. The money would be used for roads, schools and other needs in rural counties hurt by sharp declines in timber sales,in the wake of federal forest policy that restricts logging to protect endangered species such as the spotted owl.
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management, which previously said it will sell another 125,000 acres, said BLM land to be sold would be identified at the local level. The lands are typically part of a checkerboard pattern of small parcels surrounded by suburban or urban areas, Interior officials say, and have been identified as holding little natural, historical, cultural or energy value.
BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington said much of the land would be near urban areas with high market value. In recent years, the government has sold parcels for tens of millions of dollars in Nevada, for example, she said.
"Lands formerly remote are now abutting metro areas. That is certainly the case in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah," she said.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said that is precisely the reason the land should not be sold.
"Our hunters, anglers, campers and other recreational users benefit from _ and depend on _ access to public lands," Bingaman said. "In my view, selling public lands to pay down the deficit would be a shortsighted, ill-advised and irresponsible shift in federal land-management policy."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called the plan "a terrible idea based on a misguided sense of priorities."
Not only is the administration proposing to sell off public lands to help finance the president's budget, the move also won't sufficiently fund the rural schools program, which has helped California and other states, Feinstein said. "I will do everything I can to defeat this effort," she said.
Nearly 500 parcels totaling more than 85,000 acres in California are identified for possible sale.
The proposal follows a failed move last year to allow the sale of public lands for mining. Western senators had criticized the idea, as well as a plan by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., to sell off 15 national parks.
The Associated Press
Friday, February 10, 2006; 6:53 PM
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration on Friday detailed its proposal to sell more than 300,000 acres of national forests and other public land to help pay for rural schools in 41 states.
The land sales, ranging from less than an acre to more than 1,000 acres, could total more than $1 billion and would be the largest sale of forest land in decades.
Western lawmakers immediately objected, saying the short-term gains would be offset by the permanent loss of public lands. Congress would have to approve the sales, and has rejected similar proposals in recent years.
Forest Service officials say the sales are needed to raise $800 million over the next five years to pay for schools and roads in rural counties hurt by logging cutbacks on federal land. The Bureau of Land Management has said it also plans to sell federal lands to raise an estimated $250 million over five years.
Dave Alberswerth, a public lands expert with the The Wilderness Society environmental group called the plan a billion-dollar boondoggle to privatize treasured public lands to pay for "tax cuts to the rich."
"This is not going to be politically acceptable to most people," Alberswerth said.
But Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who directs forest policy, said the parcels to be sold are isolated, expensive to manage or no longer meet the needs of the national forest system. The administration expects to have to sell only about 200,000 of the 309,000 acres identified Friday to meet the $800 million goal, he said.
"These are not the crown jewels we are talking about," Rey said in an interview. The public can review the land parcels that are up for sale on the Forest Service's Web site, Rey said; Maps of just four national forests were posted as of Friday, but Rey said all the properties should be posted by month's end.
The public will have until late March to comment on the proposed sales.
"This is a reasonable proposal to take a small fraction of a percentage of national land which is the least necessary and use it for those in need and achieve an important overarching public purpose," Rey said.
The proposed sell-off would total less than half of 1 percent of the 193 million-acre national forest system. The money would be used for roads, schools and other needs in rural counties hurt by sharp declines in timber sales,in the wake of federal forest policy that restricts logging to protect endangered species such as the spotted owl.
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management, which previously said it will sell another 125,000 acres, said BLM land to be sold would be identified at the local level. The lands are typically part of a checkerboard pattern of small parcels surrounded by suburban or urban areas, Interior officials say, and have been identified as holding little natural, historical, cultural or energy value.
BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington said much of the land would be near urban areas with high market value. In recent years, the government has sold parcels for tens of millions of dollars in Nevada, for example, she said.
"Lands formerly remote are now abutting metro areas. That is certainly the case in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah," she said.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said that is precisely the reason the land should not be sold.
"Our hunters, anglers, campers and other recreational users benefit from _ and depend on _ access to public lands," Bingaman said. "In my view, selling public lands to pay down the deficit would be a shortsighted, ill-advised and irresponsible shift in federal land-management policy."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called the plan "a terrible idea based on a misguided sense of priorities."
Not only is the administration proposing to sell off public lands to help finance the president's budget, the move also won't sufficiently fund the rural schools program, which has helped California and other states, Feinstein said. "I will do everything I can to defeat this effort," she said.
Nearly 500 parcels totaling more than 85,000 acres in California are identified for possible sale.
The proposal follows a failed move last year to allow the sale of public lands for mining. Western senators had criticized the idea, as well as a plan by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., to sell off 15 national parks.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Walking the Talk
Walking the walk and talking the talk.
Where have we heard that?
Walking the Talk.
Corporate America
Religious leaders
Even environmental awareness and activism
It's easy to talk. We learn at an early age verbal utterances have rewards. But, when talking is all a political leader can do without 'walking the walk' then it is time for a change. It is also time for more than the average politics of a nation but more political awareness of the cruelty of manipulation in the face of hopelessness and confusion.
We as Americans seek 'consolation' from government. We realize the authority of our laws can control our behaviors. A good example of 'preventive' government is the laws surrounding drunk driving. Also in the case of worker safety, we expect government to react to issues that cause citizens harm in the work place and therefore we assigned such responsiblity to bureaus like OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The list of agencies within the government is extensive. Each carries with it 'hopes' of a society seeking a status of benevolence for all it's citizens. As a result I think most of us think of government as benign in our daily lives and hopefully benevolent to those less fortunate. I won't discuss the military within those dynamics. That is an entriely differnt matter. In actuality, the military should be 'in focus' here because it's image has been used as an expression of patriot dedication. It is regularly exploited by people who never ' Walked the Talk.'
In the face of an administration, majority Senate and House, mired in political scandal while facing possible impeachment a glaring oxymoron occurred on Larry King Live last night. A Non-Image of the Factual Nature of our Democracy.
"LARRY KING, CNN HOST: Tonight, exclusive, the Christian rock superstar and his near drug overdose, Michael W. Smith in his first interview on how he believes God saved him from losing his life to cocaine."
Now, how can that be an oxymoron. A man found a way to make a living as a rock star. Chocks up his success to finding God. What seems so "W"rong with that?
Three quarters of the program was dedicated in some way to Christian values. And then after an interlude between Cooper and King the program turned political. George H. W. Bush made an appearance to exploit the national audience of Christian Conservatives viewing the show to offer himself as a great man with the insight to find such an astounding story of redemption before the American people.
From the transcript:
KING: We'll be back with our remaining moments with Michael W. Smith. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE H.W. BUSH, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The music of Michael W. Smith has had an impact on millions of people all over the world. He has been an ambassador of good news for 20 years. His signature song "Friends" is a personal favorite in our house. Thank you and God bless you Michael for your friendship to me and Barbara and to our kids too.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: When President Bush the first turned 80 there was a gigantic birthday party in Houston at the baseball. I had the honor of being the emcee of that event. Five former world leaders were there and Michael w. Smith was one of many great entertainers. That was a memorable night.
SMITH: And you were a good host.
KING: That was a fun night.
SMITH: That was a great night.
KING: You're a friend of both Bushes, huh?
SMITH: I am.
KING: Are you very political?
SMITH: You know what? Yes and no. You know, I always think about whether I should run one day. I think that's the craziest thing I've ever thought of in my life, because I don't think I would make a very good politician. And it's so funny because Bono the other night said, you should run. I said, what are you talking about? You should run. I said, I can't be a politician. He said don't. Just run and win and don't be a politician.
KING: That's why you run. Don't be a politician.
SMITH: Don't be a politician.But, yes, the Bush family have been really good to the Smiths. We really love them very much.
KING: And also, Billy Graham? S
MITH: Billy's a dear friend. I love him.
KING: He is a friend of ours, too. Billy's watching right now.
SMITH: Is he watching?
KING: Oh, Billy doesn't miss it. Billy is our most loyal viewer.
SMITH: Oh, he loves you know that.
KING: What a story you are. You must pinch yourself a little. From the lowest depths to the top.
SMITH: Well, I guess it's a miracle. That's all I can say. And I'm grateful. I'm humbled. I'm honored. You know, I just want to make sure I do the right thing for the rest of the days of my life. It's too late to miss it.
KING: I wouldn't bet against it. You're a good guy man.
SMITH: Thank you, Larry.
KING: "The Second Chance" opens next Friday. Michael W. Smith, the three-time Grammy winner, one of the major, major stars in Christian contemporary music. Tomorrow night, we'll repeat our program on heart disease. Sunday night repeat the program with "Growing Pains." And Monday night take a look back at United Flight 93 back on 9/11, 2001.
THIS COUNTRY is being manipulated and so is the career of people like Mr. Smith. He has a good deal of talent and an interesting story, but, sadly The Evangelical Christian Right has been tagged by the Republican Party as belonging to them.
Mr. Smith I am sure is a good friend of Bono. We are all aware of the magnificent dedication U2 has brought to the issue of Africa and HIV/AIDS. I am confident those that 'keep company' with Bono are as admirable as he. Those people are important people not just for their gift of music, but, also for their ability to 'reach' people with a message.
That message along with the fact 'Evangelical Christians' have been sequestered into a political resource should be awareness to the country including the citizens whom identify with that religion. An awareness that their 'loyalty' to their religious teachings and the manner in which they conduct their faith has been 'resourced' into obscurity for a purpose. To harness a group of people with a message of hope yet desperately out of the mainstream of society has been the venue of the Southern Republican Party to the detriment of that religion as well as the country. To victimize a segment of the USA for political harvesting is "W"rong. It secludes them into an exculsive 'box canyon' where promises to fulfill their religious mandates take political precedent. That is unconstitutional regardless of the 'harvesting of thought' misconstrued from the 'words' of the USA Consitution. Believe me when I tell you the men whom signed that document were not evangelical Christians, they were men who believed in religous freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly as well as freedom of the press. All those freedoms of self expression are safeguards to prevent tyranny.
Those Constitutional Safeguards were never meant to control people, but, to liberate them including those that did not want to practice faith. They have a right to their own belief systems as well. It's long been known the human mind has a higher reception of visual cues than any other of the five senses. It is a highly developed survival mechanism for a human standing upright. Due to that quality the visual media has a very powerful effect on messages it delivers over the airwaves.
To return to 'the oxymoron' keeping in mind all else written here, I might also recognize the enthusiasm to 'Believe in Elvis.' It is widely held by many people that 'Elvis Lives' and by many more that his ghost still walks the ground of "Graceland." It is a reinforcing belief for the subtstantial amount of people that believe it and the tabloid newsprint that 'plays to it.' I won't contest it. It is benign and there are just people out there that love "The King." He was a great man. He was a mover and a shaker at the same time he espoused patriotism. People loved Elvis. They still do by every measurable indicator out there. His family has kept him alive. It has benefitted them, but, it would not have been possible if there wasn't a 'popular' demand for it either.
"The Oxymoron" is this. How can a so called journalist, host an hour of Christian Fundamentalism and then spring a surprise appearance of a political figure with 'enlistments' into fear by referring to the September 11th attacks in the middle of February 2006. The entire country is surprised and astounded by the revelations of reality surrounding Mr. Abramoff, Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney and a host of others elected to office, to realize none of this was possible if honesty and loyality actually prevailed.
Mr. Abramoff would not have been successful if the permission wasn't realized in DC and rewards for the money exploited from Native American Indian tribes weren't turned into bribes.
Valerie Plame would still be a covert CIA agent seeking information about WMDs. The REAL WMDs if Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney didn't try to snuff out the testimoney of Joe Wilson regarding the lies made by Bush in the State of the Union address.
The scandals that have been glossed over in the manner Larry King glossed them over on Friday night is typical of a desperate group of men interested in not only power but the control of vast amounts of financial interests outside of the political arena of DC.
I purport that it is high time the Evangelical Christians liberate themselves from 'the grip' of corrupt government with false hopes of dominating this country's value system and come to take their chances of political activism with the rest of Americans.
I apologize. I never realized how sequested they were from a society that longs for the joy of diversity. If my apology is mistakenly naive or rejected, then any rant about 'benevolent values' in alliance with this country's constitution brought forward by any religious entity is nothing but fraud for the sake of profits and potential victimization of our freedoms.
Elect government that not only "Talks the Talk" but especially "Walks the talk."
Where have we heard that?
Walking the Talk.
Corporate America
Religious leaders
Even environmental awareness and activism
It's easy to talk. We learn at an early age verbal utterances have rewards. But, when talking is all a political leader can do without 'walking the walk' then it is time for a change. It is also time for more than the average politics of a nation but more political awareness of the cruelty of manipulation in the face of hopelessness and confusion.
We as Americans seek 'consolation' from government. We realize the authority of our laws can control our behaviors. A good example of 'preventive' government is the laws surrounding drunk driving. Also in the case of worker safety, we expect government to react to issues that cause citizens harm in the work place and therefore we assigned such responsiblity to bureaus like OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The list of agencies within the government is extensive. Each carries with it 'hopes' of a society seeking a status of benevolence for all it's citizens. As a result I think most of us think of government as benign in our daily lives and hopefully benevolent to those less fortunate. I won't discuss the military within those dynamics. That is an entriely differnt matter. In actuality, the military should be 'in focus' here because it's image has been used as an expression of patriot dedication. It is regularly exploited by people who never ' Walked the Talk.'
In the face of an administration, majority Senate and House, mired in political scandal while facing possible impeachment a glaring oxymoron occurred on Larry King Live last night. A Non-Image of the Factual Nature of our Democracy.
"LARRY KING, CNN HOST: Tonight, exclusive, the Christian rock superstar and his near drug overdose, Michael W. Smith in his first interview on how he believes God saved him from losing his life to cocaine."
Now, how can that be an oxymoron. A man found a way to make a living as a rock star. Chocks up his success to finding God. What seems so "W"rong with that?
Three quarters of the program was dedicated in some way to Christian values. And then after an interlude between Cooper and King the program turned political. George H. W. Bush made an appearance to exploit the national audience of Christian Conservatives viewing the show to offer himself as a great man with the insight to find such an astounding story of redemption before the American people.
From the transcript:
KING: We'll be back with our remaining moments with Michael W. Smith. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE H.W. BUSH, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The music of Michael W. Smith has had an impact on millions of people all over the world. He has been an ambassador of good news for 20 years. His signature song "Friends" is a personal favorite in our house. Thank you and God bless you Michael for your friendship to me and Barbara and to our kids too.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: When President Bush the first turned 80 there was a gigantic birthday party in Houston at the baseball. I had the honor of being the emcee of that event. Five former world leaders were there and Michael w. Smith was one of many great entertainers. That was a memorable night.
SMITH: And you were a good host.
KING: That was a fun night.
SMITH: That was a great night.
KING: You're a friend of both Bushes, huh?
SMITH: I am.
KING: Are you very political?
SMITH: You know what? Yes and no. You know, I always think about whether I should run one day. I think that's the craziest thing I've ever thought of in my life, because I don't think I would make a very good politician. And it's so funny because Bono the other night said, you should run. I said, what are you talking about? You should run. I said, I can't be a politician. He said don't. Just run and win and don't be a politician.
KING: That's why you run. Don't be a politician.
SMITH: Don't be a politician.But, yes, the Bush family have been really good to the Smiths. We really love them very much.
KING: And also, Billy Graham? S
MITH: Billy's a dear friend. I love him.
KING: He is a friend of ours, too. Billy's watching right now.
SMITH: Is he watching?
KING: Oh, Billy doesn't miss it. Billy is our most loyal viewer.
SMITH: Oh, he loves you know that.
KING: What a story you are. You must pinch yourself a little. From the lowest depths to the top.
SMITH: Well, I guess it's a miracle. That's all I can say. And I'm grateful. I'm humbled. I'm honored. You know, I just want to make sure I do the right thing for the rest of the days of my life. It's too late to miss it.
KING: I wouldn't bet against it. You're a good guy man.
SMITH: Thank you, Larry.
KING: "The Second Chance" opens next Friday. Michael W. Smith, the three-time Grammy winner, one of the major, major stars in Christian contemporary music. Tomorrow night, we'll repeat our program on heart disease. Sunday night repeat the program with "Growing Pains." And Monday night take a look back at United Flight 93 back on 9/11, 2001.
THIS COUNTRY is being manipulated and so is the career of people like Mr. Smith. He has a good deal of talent and an interesting story, but, sadly The Evangelical Christian Right has been tagged by the Republican Party as belonging to them.
Mr. Smith I am sure is a good friend of Bono. We are all aware of the magnificent dedication U2 has brought to the issue of Africa and HIV/AIDS. I am confident those that 'keep company' with Bono are as admirable as he. Those people are important people not just for their gift of music, but, also for their ability to 'reach' people with a message.
That message along with the fact 'Evangelical Christians' have been sequestered into a political resource should be awareness to the country including the citizens whom identify with that religion. An awareness that their 'loyalty' to their religious teachings and the manner in which they conduct their faith has been 'resourced' into obscurity for a purpose. To harness a group of people with a message of hope yet desperately out of the mainstream of society has been the venue of the Southern Republican Party to the detriment of that religion as well as the country. To victimize a segment of the USA for political harvesting is "W"rong. It secludes them into an exculsive 'box canyon' where promises to fulfill their religious mandates take political precedent. That is unconstitutional regardless of the 'harvesting of thought' misconstrued from the 'words' of the USA Consitution. Believe me when I tell you the men whom signed that document were not evangelical Christians, they were men who believed in religous freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly as well as freedom of the press. All those freedoms of self expression are safeguards to prevent tyranny.
Those Constitutional Safeguards were never meant to control people, but, to liberate them including those that did not want to practice faith. They have a right to their own belief systems as well. It's long been known the human mind has a higher reception of visual cues than any other of the five senses. It is a highly developed survival mechanism for a human standing upright. Due to that quality the visual media has a very powerful effect on messages it delivers over the airwaves.
To return to 'the oxymoron' keeping in mind all else written here, I might also recognize the enthusiasm to 'Believe in Elvis.' It is widely held by many people that 'Elvis Lives' and by many more that his ghost still walks the ground of "Graceland." It is a reinforcing belief for the subtstantial amount of people that believe it and the tabloid newsprint that 'plays to it.' I won't contest it. It is benign and there are just people out there that love "The King." He was a great man. He was a mover and a shaker at the same time he espoused patriotism. People loved Elvis. They still do by every measurable indicator out there. His family has kept him alive. It has benefitted them, but, it would not have been possible if there wasn't a 'popular' demand for it either.
"The Oxymoron" is this. How can a so called journalist, host an hour of Christian Fundamentalism and then spring a surprise appearance of a political figure with 'enlistments' into fear by referring to the September 11th attacks in the middle of February 2006. The entire country is surprised and astounded by the revelations of reality surrounding Mr. Abramoff, Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney and a host of others elected to office, to realize none of this was possible if honesty and loyality actually prevailed.
Mr. Abramoff would not have been successful if the permission wasn't realized in DC and rewards for the money exploited from Native American Indian tribes weren't turned into bribes.
Valerie Plame would still be a covert CIA agent seeking information about WMDs. The REAL WMDs if Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney didn't try to snuff out the testimoney of Joe Wilson regarding the lies made by Bush in the State of the Union address.
The scandals that have been glossed over in the manner Larry King glossed them over on Friday night is typical of a desperate group of men interested in not only power but the control of vast amounts of financial interests outside of the political arena of DC.
I purport that it is high time the Evangelical Christians liberate themselves from 'the grip' of corrupt government with false hopes of dominating this country's value system and come to take their chances of political activism with the rest of Americans.
I apologize. I never realized how sequested they were from a society that longs for the joy of diversity. If my apology is mistakenly naive or rejected, then any rant about 'benevolent values' in alliance with this country's constitution brought forward by any religious entity is nothing but fraud for the sake of profits and potential victimization of our freedoms.
Elect government that not only "Talks the Talk" but especially "Walks the talk."
Let's keep our government honest.
Walking in Memphis by Marc Cohn
Put on my blue suede shoes
And I boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain
W.C. Handy -- won't you look down over me
Yeah I got a first class ticket
But I'm as blue as a boy can be
Then I'm walking in Memphis
Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale
Walking in Memphis
But do I really feel the way I feel
Saw the ghost of Elvis
On Union Avenue
Followed him up to the gates of Graceland
Then I watched him walk right through
Now security they did not see him
They just hovered 'round his tomb
But there's a pretty little thing
Waiting for the King
Down in the Jungle Room
They've got catfish on the table
They've got gospel in the air
And Reverend Green be glad to see you
When you haven't got a prayer
But boy you've got a prayer in Memphis
Now Muriel plays piano
Every Friday at the Hollywood
And they brought me down to see her
And they asked me if I would --
Do a little number
And I sang with all my might
And she said --
"Tell me are you a Christian child?"
And I said "Ma'am I am tonight"
They've got catfish on the table
They've got gospel in the air
And Reverend Green be glad to see you
When you haven't got a prayer
But boy you've got a prayer in Memphis
Put on my blue suede shoes
And I boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain
And I boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain
W.C. Handy -- won't you look down over me
Yeah I got a first class ticket
But I'm as blue as a boy can be
Then I'm walking in Memphis
Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale
Walking in Memphis
But do I really feel the way I feel
Saw the ghost of Elvis
On Union Avenue
Followed him up to the gates of Graceland
Then I watched him walk right through
Now security they did not see him
They just hovered 'round his tomb
But there's a pretty little thing
Waiting for the King
Down in the Jungle Room
They've got catfish on the table
They've got gospel in the air
And Reverend Green be glad to see you
When you haven't got a prayer
But boy you've got a prayer in Memphis
Now Muriel plays piano
Every Friday at the Hollywood
And they brought me down to see her
And they asked me if I would --
Do a little number
And I sang with all my might
And she said --
"Tell me are you a Christian child?"
And I said "Ma'am I am tonight"
They've got catfish on the table
They've got gospel in the air
And Reverend Green be glad to see you
When you haven't got a prayer
But boy you've got a prayer in Memphis
Put on my blue suede shoes
And I boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain
One might notice how this adult female Polar Bear is under weight as well.
Arctic giant: a polar bear and her cub stand on a frozen beach in Barrow, Alaska. With global warming shrinking their habitat, the US Government has agreed to study whether polar bears should be added to the nation's endangered species list.
FEMALE of any species when it comes to mammals have it doubly tough. They have to maintain their own health and body weight while carrying their young and /or lactating the current generation of dependants. Females drop body weight but hormones that support ovulation and lactation are supported by 'lipids.'
When the female of any species including humans don't carry enough body fat they literally don't ovulation anymore.
There is a human condition female athletes suffer from called "Triad." Women's Triad can literally eliminate female secondary sex characteristics. Which brings up a subject not relating to Polar Bears, but, explains all to clearly the recent attack on Low Fat diets by a fundamentalist administration without sound scientific principles.
But, back to the bears. They need our loyalty and they need their "Homeland Secured" as well. As with many aspects of Earth's balance our icefields and ice oceans are vital.
On thin ice
By Brian Payton
BRIAN PAYTON is author of the forthcoming "Shadow of the Bear: Travels in Vanishing Wilderness."
February 11, 2006
ONE AUTUMN NIGHT, I fell asleep near a pair of hungry polar bears. I was out on the tundra in a mobile lodge on the shore of Hudson Bay, spending some time with the world's largest land predators. My bunk had a small window by it with a view onto a patch of snow illuminated by a large spotlight. After an unforgettable afternoon photographing bears at rest and play, I stretched out in my sleeping bag as they took turns sitting up on their haunches, peering back at me.
The largest member of the bear family, adult male polar bears (Ursus maritimus) weigh between 770 and 1,500 pounds. The skin of a large male specimen could cover a small car. Incredibly, most polar bears are born weighing just over a pound.
They are the newest bear species, evolutionarily speaking. Polar bears are thought to have evolved into a distinct species between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. Previously, seals were able to haul themselves onto the ice pack and nurse their young in peace — until a brown bear (Ursus arctos) noticed and decided to investigate. The descendants of that bear came to depend on seals and developed into the white bears we know today.
Polar bears spend the winter and spring on the ice and are forced ashore in summer to await its return. Because there isn't much for them to do in summer, they spend a lot of time wrestling and watching the tourists and scientists who have come to watch them.
These days, however, it's becoming increasingly difficult to look them in the eye.
Life at the top of the Arctic food chain means polar bears' bodies concentrate many of the chemicals that waft up from our activities in the industrial south. For years, scientists have been tracking increasing levels of toxins (including DDT and PCBs) in polar bear flesh, organs and milk. And now, with polluted bodies, they are faced with an even bigger threat.
Polar bears rely on ice that forms fresh each year adjacent to land. They hunt seals at the ice's edge, at breathing holes in the ice and in snow-covered hollows on top of the ice where seals hide their pups. For polar bears, it's all about ice. Unfortunately, the ice is disappearing.
Arctic temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the globe — and there has already been a dramatic reduction in the Arctic Ocean's summer ice pack, which is 20% smaller than it was in the 1970s. Scientists expect it will continue its precipitous decline, resulting in dramatic effects throughout the Arctic ecosystem. In their 2004 "Arctic climate impact assessment," the world's foremost climate and Arctic scientists predicted that, by the end of this century, the changes in the north because of global warming may be so profound that the entire species (estimated at 22,000 to 27,000 polar bears) could vanish — along with the environment that shaped them.
Watching those bears outside my window, I couldn't help but wonder: How will their end come? Will a few stragglers lie down on the shore of Hudson Bay, waiting for the ice that never forms? Or will they head for the nearby town of Churchill, in Manitoba province, and make their last stand at the dump? In Inuit legends, polar bears are actually people when inside their dens and transform into bears only when they don their hides to go out into the cold. Perhaps polar bears will have to leave their fur coats at home.
Or will we take the necessary steps to save them and their environment? Will urbanites forgo their SUVs in favor of public transit? Will voters stop electing politicians who are contemptuous of science and international cooperation? Even as we contemplate these questions, our window of opportunity to save the polar bear is closing.
As I returned their gaze that cold, autumn night, I wanted to believe that awareness fosters change. Then the generator shut down, and I watched my companions fade to black.
BRIAN PAYTON is author of the forthcoming "Shadow of the Bear: Travels in Vanishing Wilderness."
February 11, 2006
ONE AUTUMN NIGHT, I fell asleep near a pair of hungry polar bears. I was out on the tundra in a mobile lodge on the shore of Hudson Bay, spending some time with the world's largest land predators. My bunk had a small window by it with a view onto a patch of snow illuminated by a large spotlight. After an unforgettable afternoon photographing bears at rest and play, I stretched out in my sleeping bag as they took turns sitting up on their haunches, peering back at me.
The largest member of the bear family, adult male polar bears (Ursus maritimus) weigh between 770 and 1,500 pounds. The skin of a large male specimen could cover a small car. Incredibly, most polar bears are born weighing just over a pound.
They are the newest bear species, evolutionarily speaking. Polar bears are thought to have evolved into a distinct species between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. Previously, seals were able to haul themselves onto the ice pack and nurse their young in peace — until a brown bear (Ursus arctos) noticed and decided to investigate. The descendants of that bear came to depend on seals and developed into the white bears we know today.
Polar bears spend the winter and spring on the ice and are forced ashore in summer to await its return. Because there isn't much for them to do in summer, they spend a lot of time wrestling and watching the tourists and scientists who have come to watch them.
These days, however, it's becoming increasingly difficult to look them in the eye.
Life at the top of the Arctic food chain means polar bears' bodies concentrate many of the chemicals that waft up from our activities in the industrial south. For years, scientists have been tracking increasing levels of toxins (including DDT and PCBs) in polar bear flesh, organs and milk. And now, with polluted bodies, they are faced with an even bigger threat.
Polar bears rely on ice that forms fresh each year adjacent to land. They hunt seals at the ice's edge, at breathing holes in the ice and in snow-covered hollows on top of the ice where seals hide their pups. For polar bears, it's all about ice. Unfortunately, the ice is disappearing.
Arctic temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the globe — and there has already been a dramatic reduction in the Arctic Ocean's summer ice pack, which is 20% smaller than it was in the 1970s. Scientists expect it will continue its precipitous decline, resulting in dramatic effects throughout the Arctic ecosystem. In their 2004 "Arctic climate impact assessment," the world's foremost climate and Arctic scientists predicted that, by the end of this century, the changes in the north because of global warming may be so profound that the entire species (estimated at 22,000 to 27,000 polar bears) could vanish — along with the environment that shaped them.
Watching those bears outside my window, I couldn't help but wonder: How will their end come? Will a few stragglers lie down on the shore of Hudson Bay, waiting for the ice that never forms? Or will they head for the nearby town of Churchill, in Manitoba province, and make their last stand at the dump? In Inuit legends, polar bears are actually people when inside their dens and transform into bears only when they don their hides to go out into the cold. Perhaps polar bears will have to leave their fur coats at home.
Or will we take the necessary steps to save them and their environment? Will urbanites forgo their SUVs in favor of public transit? Will voters stop electing politicians who are contemptuous of science and international cooperation? Even as we contemplate these questions, our window of opportunity to save the polar bear is closing.
As I returned their gaze that cold, autumn night, I wanted to believe that awareness fosters change. Then the generator shut down, and I watched my companions fade to black.
US Considers That Polar Bears Are An Endangered Species
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that it is opening the formal process to list polar bears as officially "threatened" due to the unprecedented meltdown of their sea-ice habitat caused by global warming. The finding comes in response to a December lawsuit filed under the federal Endangered Species Act by three conservation groups.
"Federal officials have now acknowledged that global warming is transforming the Arctic, and threatening polar bears with extinction," said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. "It's not too late for polar bears if we act immediately to start cutting global warming emissions."
The Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Greenpeace filed the action against Secretary of Interior Gale Norton and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to respond to the groups' petition to list polar bears under the law. A federal judge has scheduled a hearing in that case on March 17.
Just yesterday, the government's National Climatic Data Center announced that January temperatures in the United States were the warmest on record, beating the average figure by a full 8.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Two weeks ago, scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies confirmed that worldwide, 2005 was the hottest year ever recorded.
Polar bears live only in the Arctic and are totally dependent on the sea ice for all of their essential needs, including hunting their prey of ice seals. An enormous body of scientific evidence shows that the Arctic ice is vanishing much faster than previously expected. The thick multiyear ice has been shrinking as much as 10 percent per decade, and some climate models predict that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer as early as 2040.
As temperatures rise, researchers say that Arctic sea ice is forming later, breaking up earlier, and the area covered by it is shrinking. Dramatic changes have occurred in Alaska, where scientists with the U.S. Minerals Management Service documented the drowning of at least four polar bears in September 2004 when the sea ice retreated a record 160 miles off the state's northern coast. The researchers said that more polar bears likely drowned than were spotted, and predict increases in such deaths as global warming advances.
In Western Hudson Bay in Canada, polar bears are forced onto land for a period of fasting when the sea ice melts in the spring, and cannot hunt again until the ice freezes up again in the fall. Because of global warming, the season for bears to hunt on the ice has already become too short for the bears to build up sufficient fat stores for optimum health and reproduction. As a result, this population of polar bears has declined approximately 14 percent in 10 years, from 1,100 in 1995 to fewer than 950 in 2004.
Listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act -- America's safety net for plants and animals on the brink of extinction -- will provide broad protection to polar bears, including a requirement that U.S. federal agencies ensure that any action carried out, authorized or funded by the U.S. government will not "jeopardize the continued existence" of polar bears, or adversely modify their critical habitat.
"Federal officials have now acknowledged that global warming is transforming the Arctic, and threatening polar bears with extinction," said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. "It's not too late for polar bears if we act immediately to start cutting global warming emissions."
The Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Greenpeace filed the action against Secretary of Interior Gale Norton and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to respond to the groups' petition to list polar bears under the law. A federal judge has scheduled a hearing in that case on March 17.
Just yesterday, the government's National Climatic Data Center announced that January temperatures in the United States were the warmest on record, beating the average figure by a full 8.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Two weeks ago, scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies confirmed that worldwide, 2005 was the hottest year ever recorded.
Polar bears live only in the Arctic and are totally dependent on the sea ice for all of their essential needs, including hunting their prey of ice seals. An enormous body of scientific evidence shows that the Arctic ice is vanishing much faster than previously expected. The thick multiyear ice has been shrinking as much as 10 percent per decade, and some climate models predict that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer as early as 2040.
As temperatures rise, researchers say that Arctic sea ice is forming later, breaking up earlier, and the area covered by it is shrinking. Dramatic changes have occurred in Alaska, where scientists with the U.S. Minerals Management Service documented the drowning of at least four polar bears in September 2004 when the sea ice retreated a record 160 miles off the state's northern coast. The researchers said that more polar bears likely drowned than were spotted, and predict increases in such deaths as global warming advances.
In Western Hudson Bay in Canada, polar bears are forced onto land for a period of fasting when the sea ice melts in the spring, and cannot hunt again until the ice freezes up again in the fall. Because of global warming, the season for bears to hunt on the ice has already become too short for the bears to build up sufficient fat stores for optimum health and reproduction. As a result, this population of polar bears has declined approximately 14 percent in 10 years, from 1,100 in 1995 to fewer than 950 in 2004.
Listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act -- America's safety net for plants and animals on the brink of extinction -- will provide broad protection to polar bears, including a requirement that U.S. federal agencies ensure that any action carried out, authorized or funded by the U.S. government will not "jeopardize the continued existence" of polar bears, or adversely modify their critical habitat.
Casting a Cold Eye on Arctic Oil
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF (NYT)
912 words
Published: September 10, 2003
ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Alaska - Here's a helpful hint for backpackers here in the Arctic: If you're lying in your sleeping bag and suddenly feel a pat on the behind from outside the tent, YELL!
Several campers have been subjected to this kind of sexual harassment lately, and when they opened their tent flaps, they found polar bears grinning at them. This refuge is, after all, a bit like a wildlife safari in reverse -- curious animals have the opportunity to gawk at humans.
After rafting and backpacking through this wilderness for a week, weighing whether Congress should allow oil drilling here, I've reached a few conclusions. One is that both the oil industry and environmentalists exaggerate their cases.
For starters, no one has any idea how much oil is here, and we will never know unless it is explored. There has been limited exploration and test drilling in Eskimo-controlled lands in the refuge, but those results have been kept secret. Environmentalists say contemptuously that there's only a six-month supply, while Big Oil speaks of a 25-year spigot -- and they're both talking through their hats.
Estimates range from 3.2 billion barrels (which would supply all U.S. needs for six months) to 16 billion barrels, but these are all wild guesses. The top end of the range would be very significant, coming close to doubling America's proven petroleum reserves of 22 billion barrels, but there is some reason to be skeptical of the higher estimates -- particularly because the oil here may not be economical to extract.
One clue, for example, is that the Badami oil field, almost adjacent to the Arctic refuge, is now being mothballed because it was producing only 1,300 barrels a day instead of the 30,000 expected.
Arctic oil can be chimerical, and it would be tragic to sacrifice this wilderness for a series of dry wells.
It is true that oil drilling would not ravage the entire refuge. Only the coastal plain, 7 percent of the total area, would be open to drilling. The coastal plain is endless brown tundra, speckled with ponds and lakes, boggy and squishy to hike in. It is by far the least scenic part of the refuge, and if one has to drill somewhere in the area, this is the place to do it.
It's also only fair to give special weight to the views of the only people who live in the coastal plain: the Inupiat Eskimos, who overwhelmingly favor drilling (they are poor now, and oil could make them millionaires). One of the Eskimos, Bert Akootchook, angrily told me that if environmentalists were so anxious about the Arctic, they should come here and clean up the petroleum that naturally seeps to the surface of the tundra.
Yet drilling proponents who dismiss the coastal plain as a wasteland -- Alaska's governor, Frank Murkowski, has likened it to a sheet of white paper -- are talking drivel.
They should have been with me as I sleepily opened the tent flap early one morning to see a herd of caribou outside, or beheld the polar bears swimming along the coast, or admired a huge grizzly as it considered dining on nearby musk oxen.
(For a Web tour of the refuge, with audio, maps and photos, including pictures of those musk oxen, see www.nytimes.com/kristof.)
Drilling supporters also grossly understate the impact of drilling when they speak of only a 2,000-acre ''footprint'' in the Arctic. The reality is that oil would mean roads, lodgings, pipelines, security fences, guard stations and airstrips -- and my children would never be able to experience the Arctic as I have.
True, we need to get our oil from somewhere, and Americans are dying now in Iraq because of our dependence on foreign oil. So I would endorse drilling in the Arctic refuge if it were part of a mega-environmental package that also addressed global warming, an environmental challenge where we have even more at stake than in the Arctic.
Daniel Esty, a Yale scholar of the environment, proposes such a deal -- with trepidation -- in the interest of breaking the national deadlock on environmental policy.
The package could include careful oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (exploratory drilling could be done in winter without permanent damage) and, if it turned out to be the oil lake that proponents claim, commercial drilling as well.
In exchange, the right would accept a beyond-Kyoto framework to control carbon emissions, with tighter standards but a longer time frame. The deal would include $1 billion in additional financing for solar, wind and hydrogen energy, and significant increases in vehicle mileage standards to promote conservation.
Yet President Bush's push to open the Arctic refuge is not part of such a bold and thoughtful package to break the stalemate on the environment. Rather it is simply a lunge for oil. Without trying to conserve oil, Mr. Bush would gobble up a national treasure, the birthright of our descendants, as a first resort.
The argument that I find most compelling is that this primordial wilderness, a part of our national inheritance that is roughly the same as it was a thousand years ago, would be irretrievably lost if we drilled. The Bush administration's proposal to drill is therefore not just bad policy but also shameful, for it would casually rob our descendants forever of the chance to savor this magical coastal plain -- and to be slapped in the butt by a frisky polar bear.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF (NYT)
912 words
Published: September 10, 2003
ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Alaska - Here's a helpful hint for backpackers here in the Arctic: If you're lying in your sleeping bag and suddenly feel a pat on the behind from outside the tent, YELL!
Several campers have been subjected to this kind of sexual harassment lately, and when they opened their tent flaps, they found polar bears grinning at them. This refuge is, after all, a bit like a wildlife safari in reverse -- curious animals have the opportunity to gawk at humans.
After rafting and backpacking through this wilderness for a week, weighing whether Congress should allow oil drilling here, I've reached a few conclusions. One is that both the oil industry and environmentalists exaggerate their cases.
For starters, no one has any idea how much oil is here, and we will never know unless it is explored. There has been limited exploration and test drilling in Eskimo-controlled lands in the refuge, but those results have been kept secret. Environmentalists say contemptuously that there's only a six-month supply, while Big Oil speaks of a 25-year spigot -- and they're both talking through their hats.
Estimates range from 3.2 billion barrels (which would supply all U.S. needs for six months) to 16 billion barrels, but these are all wild guesses. The top end of the range would be very significant, coming close to doubling America's proven petroleum reserves of 22 billion barrels, but there is some reason to be skeptical of the higher estimates -- particularly because the oil here may not be economical to extract.
One clue, for example, is that the Badami oil field, almost adjacent to the Arctic refuge, is now being mothballed because it was producing only 1,300 barrels a day instead of the 30,000 expected.
Arctic oil can be chimerical, and it would be tragic to sacrifice this wilderness for a series of dry wells.
It is true that oil drilling would not ravage the entire refuge. Only the coastal plain, 7 percent of the total area, would be open to drilling. The coastal plain is endless brown tundra, speckled with ponds and lakes, boggy and squishy to hike in. It is by far the least scenic part of the refuge, and if one has to drill somewhere in the area, this is the place to do it.
It's also only fair to give special weight to the views of the only people who live in the coastal plain: the Inupiat Eskimos, who overwhelmingly favor drilling (they are poor now, and oil could make them millionaires). One of the Eskimos, Bert Akootchook, angrily told me that if environmentalists were so anxious about the Arctic, they should come here and clean up the petroleum that naturally seeps to the surface of the tundra.
Yet drilling proponents who dismiss the coastal plain as a wasteland -- Alaska's governor, Frank Murkowski, has likened it to a sheet of white paper -- are talking drivel.
They should have been with me as I sleepily opened the tent flap early one morning to see a herd of caribou outside, or beheld the polar bears swimming along the coast, or admired a huge grizzly as it considered dining on nearby musk oxen.
(For a Web tour of the refuge, with audio, maps and photos, including pictures of those musk oxen, see www.nytimes.com/kristof.)
Drilling supporters also grossly understate the impact of drilling when they speak of only a 2,000-acre ''footprint'' in the Arctic. The reality is that oil would mean roads, lodgings, pipelines, security fences, guard stations and airstrips -- and my children would never be able to experience the Arctic as I have.
True, we need to get our oil from somewhere, and Americans are dying now in Iraq because of our dependence on foreign oil. So I would endorse drilling in the Arctic refuge if it were part of a mega-environmental package that also addressed global warming, an environmental challenge where we have even more at stake than in the Arctic.
Daniel Esty, a Yale scholar of the environment, proposes such a deal -- with trepidation -- in the interest of breaking the national deadlock on environmental policy.
The package could include careful oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (exploratory drilling could be done in winter without permanent damage) and, if it turned out to be the oil lake that proponents claim, commercial drilling as well.
In exchange, the right would accept a beyond-Kyoto framework to control carbon emissions, with tighter standards but a longer time frame. The deal would include $1 billion in additional financing for solar, wind and hydrogen energy, and significant increases in vehicle mileage standards to promote conservation.
Yet President Bush's push to open the Arctic refuge is not part of such a bold and thoughtful package to break the stalemate on the environment. Rather it is simply a lunge for oil. Without trying to conserve oil, Mr. Bush would gobble up a national treasure, the birthright of our descendants, as a first resort.
The argument that I find most compelling is that this primordial wilderness, a part of our national inheritance that is roughly the same as it was a thousand years ago, would be irretrievably lost if we drilled. The Bush administration's proposal to drill is therefore not just bad policy but also shameful, for it would casually rob our descendants forever of the chance to savor this magical coastal plain -- and to be slapped in the butt by a frisky polar bear.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Morning Papers - concluded
The weather in Antarctica (Crystal Ice Chime) is:
Scott Base
Clear
-10.0°
Updated Saturday 11 Feb 8:59AM
The weather at Glacier Bay National Park (Crystal Wind Chime) is:
39 °F / 4 °C
Clear
Humidity:
75%
Dew Point:
32 °F / 0 °C
Wind:
Calm
Pressure:
30.32 in / 1027 hPa
Visibility:
10.0 miles / 16.1 kilometers
UV:
1 out of 16
Clouds:
Clear -
(Above Ground Level)
end
Scott Base
Clear
-10.0°
Updated Saturday 11 Feb 8:59AM
The weather at Glacier Bay National Park (Crystal Wind Chime) is:
39 °F / 4 °C
Clear
Humidity:
75%
Dew Point:
32 °F / 0 °C
Wind:
Calm
Pressure:
30.32 in / 1027 hPa
Visibility:
10.0 miles / 16.1 kilometers
UV:
1 out of 16
Clouds:
Clear -
(Above Ground Level)
end
The Bush Administration is always trying to create controversy that just doesn't exist.
Glacier National Park in Montana at dawn overlooking St. Mary's Lake.
When the park was created in 1910 it had 150 glaciers. That number has since dwindled to 30, due to warming temperatures.
George C. Deutsch is a LIAR. He is a front man for the Bush Constitutency. He has no valid credentials. HE IS NOBODY !
Yet even after his resignation he proports to say something? He needs to cry to his Mommy.
Ex-Press Aide for NASA Offers Defense
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
George C. Deutsch, the young NASA press aide who resigned on Tuesday amid claims that he had tried to keep the agency's top climate scientist from speaking publicly about global warming, defended himself publicly yesterday.
Speaking to a Texas radio station and then to The New York Times, Mr. Deutsch said the scientist, James E. Hansen, exaggerated the threat of warming and tried to cast the Bush administration's response to it as inadequate.
Mr. Deutsch also denied lying about having a college degree and trying to inject religion into some NASA Web presentations.
"I have never been told to censor science, to squelch anything or to insert religion into any issue," he told the radio reporter, Brian Cain.
Parts of that interview were posted on the Web site of WTAW-AM, in College Station (wtaw.com), where Mr. Deutsch attended Texas A&M University until he joined President Bush's campaign in 2004.
After seeing a transcript of some of the criticisms, Dr. Hansen said, "This is so wacky that it deserves little response."
In the radio interview, Mr. Deutsch also criticized others within NASA who supported Dr. Hansen's view that he was being suppressed. Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer who told The Times of several conversations in which Mr. Deutsch said his job was to "make the president look good," said she would not comment on his assertions.
"The House Science Committee is conducting an investigation because they were concerned and I'm just not prepared to stoop to his level," Ms. McCarthy said in a telephone interview last night.
Starting in late January with several interviews in The New York Times, Dr. Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, and several career NASA public affairs officials and scientists complained about what they said were intensifying efforts by political appointees in NASA, including Mr. Deutsch, to control more closely his lectures and Web presentations.
Last Friday, after more NASA scientists and public affairs officers told The Times of other instances in which political appointees altered news releases or Web presentations in ways the workers said were tinged by politics, Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, issued a "statement of scientific openness" to all NASA employees saying, "we have identified a number of areas in which clarification and improvements to the standard operating procedures of the Office of Public Affairs can and will be made."
Dr. Griffin also said "it is not the job of public affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff."
The Times reported on Wednesday that contrary to his résumé on file with NASA, Mr. Deutsch, who is 24, never graduated from Texas A&M. Yesterday, in an interview with The Times, Mr. Deutsch said he had written the résumé in anticipation of graduating.
"When I left college," he said, "I did not properly update my résumé. As a result, it may appear misleading to some. However, I was up front with NASA about my undergraduate status when they hired me."
In an e-mail message, Mr. Deutsch said that remarks about religious views on the creation of the universe sent last October to a Web designer working on a presentation on Albert Einstein were "personal observations" and never were reflected in the material that was posted online.
"We are both Christians, and I was sharing with him my personal opinions on the Big Bang theory versus intelligent design," Mr. Deutsch wrote to The Times. "What I said about intelligent design did not affect the presentation of the Big Bang theory in the subsequent Einstein Web story. This is a very important point, because I have been accused of trying to insert religion into this story, which I was not trying to do."
Ex-Press Aide for NASA Offers Defense
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
George C. Deutsch, the young NASA press aide who resigned on Tuesday amid claims that he had tried to keep the agency's top climate scientist from speaking publicly about global warming, defended himself publicly yesterday.
Speaking to a Texas radio station and then to The New York Times, Mr. Deutsch said the scientist, James E. Hansen, exaggerated the threat of warming and tried to cast the Bush administration's response to it as inadequate.
Mr. Deutsch also denied lying about having a college degree and trying to inject religion into some NASA Web presentations.
"I have never been told to censor science, to squelch anything or to insert religion into any issue," he told the radio reporter, Brian Cain.
Parts of that interview were posted on the Web site of WTAW-AM, in College Station (wtaw.com), where Mr. Deutsch attended Texas A&M University until he joined President Bush's campaign in 2004.
After seeing a transcript of some of the criticisms, Dr. Hansen said, "This is so wacky that it deserves little response."
In the radio interview, Mr. Deutsch also criticized others within NASA who supported Dr. Hansen's view that he was being suppressed. Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer who told The Times of several conversations in which Mr. Deutsch said his job was to "make the president look good," said she would not comment on his assertions.
"The House Science Committee is conducting an investigation because they were concerned and I'm just not prepared to stoop to his level," Ms. McCarthy said in a telephone interview last night.
Starting in late January with several interviews in The New York Times, Dr. Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, and several career NASA public affairs officials and scientists complained about what they said were intensifying efforts by political appointees in NASA, including Mr. Deutsch, to control more closely his lectures and Web presentations.
Last Friday, after more NASA scientists and public affairs officers told The Times of other instances in which political appointees altered news releases or Web presentations in ways the workers said were tinged by politics, Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, issued a "statement of scientific openness" to all NASA employees saying, "we have identified a number of areas in which clarification and improvements to the standard operating procedures of the Office of Public Affairs can and will be made."
Dr. Griffin also said "it is not the job of public affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff."
The Times reported on Wednesday that contrary to his résumé on file with NASA, Mr. Deutsch, who is 24, never graduated from Texas A&M. Yesterday, in an interview with The Times, Mr. Deutsch said he had written the résumé in anticipation of graduating.
"When I left college," he said, "I did not properly update my résumé. As a result, it may appear misleading to some. However, I was up front with NASA about my undergraduate status when they hired me."
In an e-mail message, Mr. Deutsch said that remarks about religious views on the creation of the universe sent last October to a Web designer working on a presentation on Albert Einstein were "personal observations" and never were reflected in the material that was posted online.
"We are both Christians, and I was sharing with him my personal opinions on the Big Bang theory versus intelligent design," Mr. Deutsch wrote to The Times. "What I said about intelligent design did not affect the presentation of the Big Bang theory in the subsequent Einstein Web story. This is a very important point, because I have been accused of trying to insert religion into this story, which I was not trying to do."
Man Who Left NASA Says He's Under Attack
Well, yeah, I guess so. Consider your career WITH Science OVER ! Go back to school.
World is warmer than it has been for 1200 years
By Mike Toner in Atlanta, Georgia
February 11, 2006
GLOBAL warming in the past century has been greater than any other shift in the world's climate over the past 1200 years, researchers have reported.
The analysis of data from tree rings, shell fossils, ice cores and temperature measurements from 14 locations on three continents shows that the current warming trend is the most extensive change - warm or cold - since the time of the Vikings.
Reporting their findings in the journal Science, Timothy Osborn and Keith Briffa, climatologists at the University of East Anglia, home to the leading British climate research centre, stop short of blaming the 20th-century warming on industrial emissions or other human factors.
But they say the geographic extent of the warming is more widespread and more pronounced than the one that turned Greenland green 1000 years ago.
Their analyses of tree ring and other climate "proxies" from Europe, Asia and North America show two other pronounced climate shifts during the same period: the Medieval Warm Period from 890 to 1170, and the Little Ice Age, which gripped the northern hemisphere from 1580 to 1850.
The medieval warming, which encouraged the Vikings to settle in previously inhospitable regions of Greenland and Iceland, is sometimes cited by critics of modern global warming theories as evidence that the Earth can experience widespread warming independent of human activity.
"It's good that they [Osborn and Briffa] acknowledge that the last thousand years contained two warm periods with a cold one in between," said Fred Singer, president of the US-based Science Policy Project, which frequently disputes claims of global warming. "But it still doesn't prove that the 20th century was unique."
While the study's temperature measurements go back only to the 1800s, the researchers were able to reconstruct the northern hemisphere's climate back as far as the ninth century.
Researchers correlated records with 14 long-term climate proxies, ranging from shell fossils in Chesapeake Bay in the US to tree rings in Mongolia.
"Both individually and taken as a whole, these reconstructions support the conclusion that it is likely that the late 20th century was the warmest period in the past millennium or longer," Dr Osborn says.
Averaged across the globe, the increase in temperatures is numerically small - about one degree above normal, and about two degrees warmer than during the late 1800s.
The increase, however, has been especially sharp in recent years, with all 10 of the warmest years on record occurring since the mid-1990s.
The warming has been linked to accelerated melting of mountain glaciers and polar ice sheets throughout the world, warmer sea surface temperatures, the earlier arrival of spring in the northern hemisphere and other changes.
Many scientists predict the warming will increase if man-made releases of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are not curbed.
World is warmer than it has been for 1200 years
By Mike Toner in Atlanta, Georgia
February 11, 2006
GLOBAL warming in the past century has been greater than any other shift in the world's climate over the past 1200 years, researchers have reported.
The analysis of data from tree rings, shell fossils, ice cores and temperature measurements from 14 locations on three continents shows that the current warming trend is the most extensive change - warm or cold - since the time of the Vikings.
Reporting their findings in the journal Science, Timothy Osborn and Keith Briffa, climatologists at the University of East Anglia, home to the leading British climate research centre, stop short of blaming the 20th-century warming on industrial emissions or other human factors.
But they say the geographic extent of the warming is more widespread and more pronounced than the one that turned Greenland green 1000 years ago.
Their analyses of tree ring and other climate "proxies" from Europe, Asia and North America show two other pronounced climate shifts during the same period: the Medieval Warm Period from 890 to 1170, and the Little Ice Age, which gripped the northern hemisphere from 1580 to 1850.
The medieval warming, which encouraged the Vikings to settle in previously inhospitable regions of Greenland and Iceland, is sometimes cited by critics of modern global warming theories as evidence that the Earth can experience widespread warming independent of human activity.
"It's good that they [Osborn and Briffa] acknowledge that the last thousand years contained two warm periods with a cold one in between," said Fred Singer, president of the US-based Science Policy Project, which frequently disputes claims of global warming. "But it still doesn't prove that the 20th century was unique."
While the study's temperature measurements go back only to the 1800s, the researchers were able to reconstruct the northern hemisphere's climate back as far as the ninth century.
Researchers correlated records with 14 long-term climate proxies, ranging from shell fossils in Chesapeake Bay in the US to tree rings in Mongolia.
"Both individually and taken as a whole, these reconstructions support the conclusion that it is likely that the late 20th century was the warmest period in the past millennium or longer," Dr Osborn says.
Averaged across the globe, the increase in temperatures is numerically small - about one degree above normal, and about two degrees warmer than during the late 1800s.
The increase, however, has been especially sharp in recent years, with all 10 of the warmest years on record occurring since the mid-1990s.
The warming has been linked to accelerated melting of mountain glaciers and polar ice sheets throughout the world, warmer sea surface temperatures, the earlier arrival of spring in the northern hemisphere and other changes.
Many scientists predict the warming will increase if man-made releases of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are not curbed.
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