North Carolina GOP: Maybe We Can Pretend That Global Warming Will Just Go Away

The state of North Carolina is on the verge of stuffing their fingers in their ears and saying “Blah, blah, blah!”

            And they want a law to do it.

            Apparently GOP legislators of the state don’t like some news that has come out of their state’s Coastal Resources Commission, which said that, due to global warming, an increase of about one meter in sea level can be expected by the year 2100. Coastal North Carolina is low lying. A rise of that much ocean could threaten 2000 square miles of the eastern part of that state.

            Instead of preparing for the rising waters and the threats that it may make on communities and infrastructure, North Carolina GOP lawmakers are circulating a bill that takes those inconvenient findings of the scientists and makes them go away. The proposed legislation restricts the measurement of sea level rise to the state’s coastal commission using historical records. Using any predictions based upon climate science would be against the law.

            Take away that pesky science stuff and all that global warming and rising seas goes away!

            Delaware, Louisiana, California, as well as other states, are preparing for sea level rises of a meter or more. Maine is preparing for a rise of up to two meters. But in Louisiana their GOP lawmakers want to stick their fingers in their ears and shout “Blah, blah, blah! Global warming is not happening!” In the meantime North Carolinians could build houses in coastal areas, only to see them become ruined by rising tides, and the building of protective structures, like higher seawalls, could be delayed needlessly.

            If this bill is any precedent, the Grand Old Party of North Carolina will next make it against the law for meteorologists to predict rain on days when picnics are planned.

Make all that sea level rise stuff go away!

Hat tip to my friend Robin for telling me about this story.

Roadkill From the Ocotillo Express

There are fewer than 1000 Peninsular Bighorn sheep, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has just granted permission for ten of those sheep to be “taken,” meaning that people could be moving them, harassing them, or even killing them. The sheep have been listed as endangered since the late nineties, when their numbers had dwindled to just a couple hundred individuals. Since then their numbers have rebounded, largely because of the protected status.

            The sheep are true wonders, beautiful creatures that my wife and I have been lucky enough to get a glimpse of on trips to Anza-Borrego State Park. This decision does not conform in the slightest with the mission of the USFWS to work for the recovery of imperiled plant and animal species.

Bighorn sheep in Anza-Borego State Park

The USFWS granted the taking to allow for the construction of the Ocotillo Express wind energy facility of over 100 wind turbines, many of them expected to be over 400 feet tall, in the desert east of the Imperial County town of Ocotillo. The facility received its final approval from the Interior Department last week.

It’s easy to see that the bad news for the bighorn sheep has been in the works for some time. In 2009 the USFWS diminished the amount of land designated for protection of the Peninsular Bighorn sheep by more than half. Some of the area that lost that status is where they are now building the Ocotillo Express. At the time of the reduction, the USFWS officials said that research since 2001 identified areas that were actually used by the sheep. Well, the research was either wrong, or the “actual” places where many of these sheep roam and live was kinda sorta overlooked by “mistake.”

Additionally, I found this story in the online edition of the East County Magazine, a local publication of the rural backcountry of San Diego County. The San Diego UT, the recognized news source of the major metropolitan area of San Diego, the news source of record, had no story on the taking of the sheep, despite the significance this story has and the ramifications that a decision like this might have on the sheep and other threatened or endangered species.

In the meantime, it’s full speed ahead for the Ocotillo Express, sheep or no sheep.

McCarthyite Propaganda For West Virginia

This is almost hard to believe. This is from a television station in the north central area of West Virginia, where I grew up. It is an editorial in support of the mining companies and mountaintop removal that is masquerading as journalism.

The crudity of this television piece reminds me of McCarthyite red scare propaganda. Despite the crudity of McCarthyism it nonetheless worked, with Congressional hearings, loyalty oaths, and ruined careers and lives. I guess that the folks at this TV station know that, that propaganda doesn’t have to be sophisticated to work. You just have to have the unmitigated gall to use it in the first place.


ref: http://www.wdtv.com/wdtv.cfm?func=view&section=5-News&item=WVa-Lawmakers-Cry-Foul-to-EPAs-Plan-to-Appeal-Mine-Permit-Veto2882

Good News For Appalachia

I have voiced my reservations about the Obama administration’s record on the environment. So it’s heartening to have some good news coming out of Washington. The EPA is appealing a ruling by a District Court judge over the permitting of a huge mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia. This is great news for Appalachia and the rest of our country.

            The mine, which had been permitted by the Army Corps of Engineers, would bury about seven miles of streams near the historic town of Blair, West Virginia. The Corps has been the department issuing mountaintop removal permits since the establishment of the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act, the legislation that controls mountaintop removal and other surface mining operations, in the late seventies. The EPA is stepping up to the plate here and, in my opinion, doing the job that it should have been doing all along in the case of this horrendous mining practice: protecting the streams and fresh waters of this country.

            In their move to revoke the permit, the EPA said the proposed mine would use “destructive and unsustainable mining practices that jeopardize the health of Appalachian communities and the clean water on which they depend.” I think every mountaintop mine fits that description, so in many ways this move by the EPA is a day late and a dollar short for around 500 mine sites in Appalachia.

            But good news for the environment is so rare, so I am thankful for this recent development. Kudos to the EPA and the Obama administration.

Mountaintop Removal and the Continuation of Evil

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are out of office, but much of the damage that they and their administration accomplished continues. One of the most insidious eleventh hour rule changes made by the last administration was a change to the part of the Clean Water Act that allows mountaintop removal coal mining companies to dump their wastes anywhere that they please.

            Before the Bush change, mountaintop removal mines had to maintain buffer zones of 100 feet between streams and the material that they dumped as waste from their mines. With the change of just a few words, the Bush administration changed the idea of a stream from that of a natural area to that of a construction site and the waste from the mine to being construction material. The mine companies could then dump their waste and bury streams any which way they wanted.

            Obama and his administration want to change the wording of the regulation to resemble its original intent. It seems, however, that this small step in the right direction is being impeded by House GOP members who are, in a fairly obvious tactic of harassing the Interior Department and the administration, subpoenaing documents in relation to the planned changes to the regulation.

            Edmund Burke, the British statesman who developed the philosophical underpinnings of modern conservatism, said “when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” When I think about mountaintop removal and run across an incident like this subpoena—only one of the ways that the GOP is guaranteeing that this most horrible and destructive mining practice continues—I can’t help but sometimes despair that Burke was a blind optimist who had no experience of the corruption of greed and money.

New Fracking Disclosure Requirement (Sort Of)

“New Proposal on Fracking Gives Ground to Industry” reads the New York Times headline.

Apparently the Obama administration gave a lot of ground.

Although the measure will, for the first time, make a federal requirement to disclose the chemicals used in fracking, those chemicals can be disclosed after the fracking has been completed. As originally proposed, the regulation would have required oil and gas companies to disclose the chemicals and solutions 30 days before they started the process of fracking.

If this original regulation had gone forward, we would have been able to see what they were planning on pumping into the cracks and crevices of the rocks that lie thousands of feet below us, and we could have ascertained the risks posed to our groundwater and health as we reviewed the chemicals and mixtures used in fracking. If we found carcinogens or poisons, we would have been able to raise our objections and have the energy company change the fracking constituents or possibly halt the process altogether.

            But with the “significant concessions” they can go ahead and frack away, using whatever chemicals they please, and they only have to tell us what’s in their fracking solutions after those chemicals are in the ground. Does this make any sense? Have you ever heard of anything else working this way? Your city council looking at the design for a community redevelopment after they have approved it? Learning the name of your wife after you’ve married her?

            With industry being so powerful we wind up with legislation that seems like it was written in Bizarro Land and that in reality doesn’t do a whole lot of good.

Watch Out For Those Madmen, Tyrants, and Others Who Might Be Informed About Global Warming

That’s right. This is for real. This is a real billboard put up by the Heartland Institute in Chicago. Where to begin with this? As the Guardian said about the billboard that it is “quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.”

            On their website Heartland Institute announces that, Besides Kaczynsky, they plan to put up other billboards with the likenesses of Fidel Castro, Osama bin Laden, and Charles Manson and say that “The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”

            Who thought this campaign up? An unschooled eight-year-old? The folks at the Heartland Institute now realize possibly that there is no intellectual underpinning to their attacks on climate scientists. So they have reduced themselves to this almost surreal swipe. My desire for this blog is to write about how we think about the environment. I almost hate to include this billboard. I don’t think much thought went into putting it up.


Update 5/5/12: Apparently you can only push stupid so far. After criticism that even came from their supporters, the Heartland Institute pulled down this stupid billboard. The billboard was only up for a matter of hours. One of the heartland Institute's allies, Anthony Watts, attributed the ill-conceived ad campaign to battle fatigue. I think that it's more basic than that: when you believe stupid things, you do stupid things.