Tag: polar bears

Sep 19 2010

The Koch Brothers Million(s) Dollar effort to Halt Progress

Americans for Prosperity has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception. In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests, in April, 2009, Americans for Prosperity hosted a Web site offering supporters “Tea Party Talking Points”.

Talking Points: Taxpayer Tea Party   [the Bullet point version, pdf]

Americans for Prosperity — April 2009

— Stop the handouts to Wall Street.

— Stop the Federal Reserve’s printing press

— Stop the federal bailouts that pick winners and losers in the marketplace.

— Stop exploding the national debt, which will crush our children and grandchildren.

— The grassroots MUST take action in order to achieve these goals.

Federal Spending

The Obama Budget

Endless Government Bailouts

IRS History and Horror Stories

Who’s behind the baggers?

Americans for Prosperity Foundation — an organization that David Koch started, in 2004

Koch who?

And you thought the Teabaggers were being “run” by the Beckster …

Jul 13 2009

Considered Forthwith: Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

Welcome to the 16th installment of “Considered Forthwith.”

This weekly series looks at the various committees in the House and the Senate. Committees are the workshops of our democracy. This is where bills are considered, revised, and occasionally advance for consideration by the House and Senate. Most committees also have the authority to exercise oversight of related executive branch agencies.

Well, DK Greenworks week has come and gone, but the group lives on. Click the link and join us. In keeping with the green theme, this week I examine the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Oct 25 2008

She’s Got To Be Kidding, Right?

This very brief essay that might be about hypocrisy. Or it might be that that McPalin campaign is giving you and me and all the other people who care about Global Warming a raised middle digit.  You decide.

These are polar bears:

Photobucket

In May, 2008, before she was a VP candidate, the Great Huntress decided that polar bears shouldn’t be on the endangered species list, where Bushco had put them.  The Anchorage Daily News wrote:

The State of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday.

She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state’s northern and northwestern coasts.

Palin argued there is not enough evidence to support a listing. Polar bears are well-managed and their population has dramatically increased over 30 years as a result of conservation, she said.

Climate models that predict continued loss of sea ice, the main habitat of polar bears, during summers are unreliable, Palin said.

The announcement drew a strong response from the primary author of the listing petition.

“She’s either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading, and both are unbecoming,” said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Alaska deserves better.”

Put simply, Palin is a hard-core global warming denier:

Q: What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?

A: A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.

But you already knew all of that.  You’ve already ranted and banged on the table about this and cursed a blue streak at the screens on your television and monitor.  This is nothing new.

Then, last night, on Keith, I thought I saw Sarah Palin wearing on her right lapel a polar bear pin.  Just like this:

Photobucket

I was paying special attention, because I wanted to see whether she was still wearing the RNC purchased and soon to be donated to charity designer threads.  Normally, I don’t pay much attention.  Last night I was paying attention because I wanted to see if she had gotten, well, more frumpy.  That didn’t happen. To put it mildly, I was surprised by the pin.  Maybe I’m easily surprised.

There is no really satisfactory explanation for this.  Are they hypocrites of the first degree? Is the McPalin campaign that clueless? Maybe after the last eight years, they think cluelessness, for which they have voted 90% of the time, is a qualification for running the nation.  But then I had a darker thought.  Maybe she’s wearing the pin to “energize the base,” and it’s a gigantic FU to anyone who cares about the environment.

You choose.  Either way, I wish McPalin would be gone.

Sep 17 2008

Global Warming refugees on DC streets

Every day, it seems, brings fresh news and fresh images of Global Warming‘s mounting impact on humanity (and human activities), local ecosystems, and the global ecosystem. Just coming across my desk are images of Global Warming refugees appearing in the nation’s capital.

These refugees provide dramatic images underlinign “how global warming is making polar bears homeless by causing the sea ice they rely on to melt, threatening many polar bear populations with extinction.”

Sep 11 2007

News from the Northwest

Also posted at Truth & Progress


The Copper Salmon Wilderness

Oregon’s 4th district congressman Peter DeFazio and Senator Ron Wyden have introduced bills to create the 13,700-acre Copper Salmon Wilderness in southwestern Oregon.

Hallelujah.

This one’s for you, LoE:

“Now that the Republicans no longer control the Congress, there’s a possibility of doing a meritorious wilderness bill,” DeFazio said Monday. He said former Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., who was the gatekeeper for wilderness bills before he lost re-election last year, “hated wilderness with a passion.”

The proposal is enthusiastically supported by virtually every local official, the local chamber of commerce, Governor Kulongoski, and hunting and fishing groups. And for good reason. The area is home to one of the most productive salmon spawning grounds in North America. Its loss would be yet another blow to both the commercial and sport fisheries.

Friends of Elk River presents the case:

What would the Copper Salmon Wilderness protect?
 

  • the headwaters of the Elk, Sixes and South Fork Coquille Rivers

  • eighteen miles of streams used for spawning and rearing by Coho salmon and coastal cutthroat trout, both listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), as well as Chinook salmon, steelhead, resident rainbow trout and lampreys

  • critical habitat for spotted owls and marbled murrelets, both listed under the ESA

  • one of the last large stands of old-growth Port-Orford-cedar that remains free of the deadly Phytophthora lateralis root disease

  • a wildlife corridor extending from the Grassy Knob Wilderness near the coast to the Wild Rogue Wilderness, the Kalmiopsis Wilderness and south through the Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion to the Yolla Bolly Wilderness

In effect, the adjacent 17,200-acre Grassy Knob Wilderness is being doubled. Click on the map above to expand it and see the location.

The bills are not yet available at THOMAS. When they are, Wyden’s will be S. 2034 and DeFazio’s H.R. 3513.

Sep 10 2007

“Mapping Claims to the Spoils of Global Warming”

If you read some newspapers, you’ll find global warming is good for business. No, strike that. Global warming is GREAT for business. This is how the “science” journal at the Wall Street Journal enthusiastically describes what Global Warming means to its readers.

Icebreaker HealyResearchers aboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy are mapping claims to the spoils of global warming.

North of Alaska, the 23 scientists of the Healy are gathering the data legally required to extend national territories across vast reaches of the mineral-rich seafloor usually blocked by Arctic ice. Fathom by fathom, multibeam sonar sensors mounted on the Healy’s hull chart a submerged plateau called the Chukchi Cap, in a region that may contain 25% of the world’s reserves of oil and natural gas.

In an era of climate change, these frozen assets are up for grabs, as melting ice allows detailed mapping and, one day perhaps, drilling.

The faster the ice goes, the sooner the oil flows. And vice versa. The faster we burn oil, the sooner the ice goes. Where there’s oil, there’s money to be made. The stunning, accelerating loss of the polar ice cap merely opens up the Arctic for oil and gas exploitation. If the polar bears go extinct along the way, then sobeit — no cost to doing business.