GREENLAND: THICKENING ICE SHEETS AND MELTING GLACIERS

There have been various reports of Greenland glaciers "calving" (bits falling off into the sea) and this has been presented as evidence of global warming. I have forborne commenting on such nonsense as calving is a sign of EXPANDING glaciers. However, I guess some comment is needed. The following email from Dr. Craig Loehle (Craigloehl@aol.com) of NCASI to Benny Peiser is succinct:

How do we reconcile one report showing increased dumping of ice from Greenland into the ocean (which supposedly means the ice is melting) with another showing the ice sheet thickening? Simple. Glaciers move because of increased pressure from above. If you increase the amount of snow in the interior, it will increase movement downslope. It can be simultaneously true that there is more loss at the ocean and more build up in the interior because the snow input is large enough for both. We would not conclude from increase river flow that an upstream lake was draining--usually both lake levels and river levels rise together (in extreme cases we call this a flood). The same is true for rivers of ice.






Warming 'can't be blamed' for storms

Global warming cannot be directly blamed for any significant tropical storm in the past two years, says an international group of meteorologists who submitted their findings to a climate conference in South Africa. Although 2004 and last year produced record hurricane seasons in the US, including the devastating Katrina, none could be put down to a long-term trend, the report says. In the same period Brazil experienced its first cyclone, there were five in the Cook Islands in five weeks and 10 in Japan.

A report on tropical storms submitted to the World Meteorological Organisation's Commission for Atmospheric Science in Cape Town says: "No single high-impact cyclone event of 2004 and 2005 can be directly attributed to global warming, though there may be an impact on the group as a whole." The report was written by meteorologists from the US, Britain, China and Australia, including the Bureau of Meteorology's John McBride and Jeff Kepert. They said there was evidence that the power of tropical cyclones was increasing and that the proportion of intense cyclones was also increasing.

Dr McBride told The Australian that there was widespread dissent in the research community about whether the increase in the proportion of intense storms could be linked to global warming. "A lot of scientists, while they don't say that this can't possibly happen, say you can't tell from the data that we have," he said. "The data keeps improving all the time. "Now you can tell how intense a cyclone is because you've got so much better satellite imagery and you can send research aircraft out there in its path, but in the past you couldn't."

The rising damage bill associated with tropical storms was linked to the increase of development along coastlines, increasing populations and higher insured values. Australian director of meteorology Geoff Love said in a statement: "Any significant increase in storm activity would compound these problems."

Dr McBride, Dr Kepert and their colleagues say that projected rises in sea levels "are a cause for concern" because "the primary cause of death (in a cyclone) is salt-water flooding associated with storm surge". The scientists say there is nothing to suggest that the extent of the regions in which cyclones are generated will increase significantly.

Source






Environmentalists will cause California levees to break--which is what they want

Three Central Valley lawmakers unveiled flood-control bills Wednesday as part of a larger rollout of public works legislation sponsored by Assembly Republicans. Stockton's Greg Aghazarian, Fresno's Mike Villines and Richvale's Doug LaMalfa are carrying the legislation, all of which would suspend the California Environmental Quality Act for levee repairs. Assembly Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakers-field said the proposals, along with others to streamline road-building projects and protect highway money, represent their stance in the larger debate over public works that is dominating discussion at the Capitol.

Suspending CEQA, as the act is known, strips layers of bureaucratic red tape away from routine levee repair projects, Aghazarian and others say. Do this, and the dollars Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature are asking voters to spend will go farther. "We are looking to do something in California other than buy new studies," McCarthy said.

But levee engineers who actually do the fixing say the real hindrance to their efforts isn't CEQA, it's the federal Endangered Species Act. "The biggest, No. 1 problem is clearly ESA," said Joe Countryman of MBK Engineers, a firm that performs levee work in the Delta. "CEQA is much less onerous." Bill Darsie of Stockton-based Kjeldsen, Sinnock & Neudeck agreed. "CEQA really isn't the problem. The problem is ESA." To be sure, while Darsie says he's never seen it happen with levee work, the potential for problems does exist with CEQA. Should a group take umbrage with a maintenance project, it could use the law as a weapon to stop the project. "There are times when provisions of CEQA can be untenable," he said.

Aghazarian, who's sponsoring the bill to suspend CEQA for routine levee maintenance, said his proposal would eliminate that potential. "If CEQA's not the problem, let's put this in the code so it doesn't become a problem," Aghazarian said. "Why not do this if it has the potential to save someone's property or life?" Villines' proposal would allow the governor to declare a state of emergency to repair levees determined by either the Army Corps of Engineers or the state Department of Water Resources to be an imminent flood threat. Several such sites already have been identified in the Delta along the Sacramento River.

LaMalfa's bill would eliminate an existing requirement for levee repair crews to maintain the same amount of natural habitat they found before they did the repairs. Countryman said his work in the Delta faces this problem, but it's easily dealt with because new habitat springs up in unused corners of the Delta islands all the time.

Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, panned the ideas. "In a nutshell, these Assembly Republican bills roll back state environmental laws in the guise of flood protection," Maviglio said.

Aghazarian countered by noting that existing law exempted CEQA provisions for Pac Bell Park in San Francisco, the BART route in the East Bay and even for potential Olympic construction in California. "A lot of these make perfect sense, but we should at least have these same protections for our levees," he said. McCarthy said their public works package is a starting point; he knows it will not survive the greater public works debate intact. "What we're trying to do is bring solutions," he said. "We want to bring something to the table."

Source






Future of nation's rivers, wetlands hinges on 2 key SCOTUS cases

Samuel Alito will make his Supreme Court debut with a splash this week when the justices hear two cases that could determine the future of the Clean Water Act. The cases, both from Michigan and scheduled for hearing on Tuesday, could have an enormous impact. For property-rights advocates, an unfavorable ruling could spread the shadow of federal regulation over every tiny stream and rivulet in America, stifling development. Federal authority would extend to "virtually every body of water in the nation -- every brook and pond, every dry wash -- that has any connection with navigable waters, no matter how remote," warned a coalition of water suppliers, farmers and the states of Alaska and Utah in one of more than 50 briefs filed with the court.

For environmentalists, a loss would strike at the heart of the nation's water resources. Federal agencies would be powerless to prevent "the discharge of sewage, toxic pollutants and fill into ... the large majority of our nation's rivers, streams and other waters," said clean-water agencies from two-thirds of the states, including California.

The two lawsuits challenge the federal government's power to prevent landowners from filling and developing wetlands -- marshes, ponds, drainage ditches or small streams -- that have some connection with a distant river or lake. Lower courts ruled in both cases that the Clean Water Act of 1972, which allows federal agencies to prevent pollution of navigable waters, regulates the filling of small wetlands that impact larger waterways, even those many miles away.

Property-rights groups argue that "navigable waters" must be interpreted to mean only rivers, streams and lakes that can be navigated by boat, or adjacent wetlands that significantly affect navigation or commerce on the larger waterways. The cases return the court to an issue it left unanswered in 2001, when it ruled 5-4 that the Clean Water Act did not give the government authority over wetlands that were used by migratory birds but were isolated from navigable rivers and lakes. The wetlands in the Michigan cases belong to a larger category of waters that are "hydrologically" connected to navigable waterways -- that is, they are part of the same water system.

The two cases, which will be heard together, are the first on the Supreme Court calendar for Alito, a veteran federal appeals court judge who won Senate confirmation last month to succeed the retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. They will also be the first environmental cases for Chief Justice John Roberts, President Bush's other appointee, who was seated in October.

Conservation groups opposed both nominations, largely because of past rulings by Alito and Roberts that appeared to take a narrow view of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce, the constitutional underpinning of federal environmental laws. Alito also took part in appeals court rulings that rejected a federal agency's water cleanup plan and limited private citizens' ability to challenge water pollution under the Clean Water Act. The Bush administration, which proposed limiting federal authority over wetlands in 2003 but backed off in the face of state opposition, is supporting the government's regulatory power before the court. A ruling is due by the end of June.

Like many Supreme Court cases, these are small-scale disputes with big implications. One landowner, John Rapanos of Midland, Mich., filled 50 acres of wetlands with sand in the 1980s so he could offer the property for sale to a shopping mall developer. The land is 20 miles from Saginaw Bay but is linked to it by ditches and streams. Rapanos was convicted in 1995 of a criminal violation of the Clean Water Act and could face a prison sentence if the Supreme Court rules against him.

Developers June and Keith Carabell were stopped by federal regulators from building a condominium complex on land near Mount Clemens, Mich., that includes 16 acres of wetlands. A berm, or earthen mound that impedes water flow, separates the swampy acreage from a drainage ditch that leads to a creek and a lake about a mile away. What happens in their cases could affect much of the 100 million acres of wetlands in the United States.

Ecologically, wetlands serve multiple functions: They filter pollutants from storm runoffs, limit flooding by absorbing water from heavy rains, and provide habitat for fish and wildlife. If the Clean Water Act, which protects navigable waters, is interpreted to allow widespread degradation of wetlands, "it would be like saying you cannot cut down a tree, but are free to poison its roots," said attorney James Murphy of the National Wildlife Federation, one of numerous conservation groups taking part in the case.

But property-rights groups say the issue is not whether sensitive waters should be protected but who -- the federal government or the states -- should do the protecting. "This case is about the federal government overstepping its authority, not about whether our water will be clean," said Rapanos' lawyer, Reed Hopper of the Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento. If federal authority was limited, he said, wetlands would still be "subject to vigorous protections imposed by states."

Most state governments disagree. Only one-third of the states, including California, have their own full-scale wetlands protection programs, and few states are likely to step in if federal regulation is withdrawn, state clean-water agencies said in court papers. They said the reasons are both financial and political -- protecting resources can be expensive, and often yields to "the inevitable competition for jobs and economic growth."

When the court barred federal regulation of isolated wetlands in 2001, states that tried to fill the gap found that developers' bulldozers moved more quickly than regulators, the state agencies said. But that wasn't true in California, which expanded its wetlands program after the 2001 ruling, said Walnut Creek attorney Roderick Walston, a former state lawyer who now represents the water-supply agencies and two states seeking to narrow federal regulation. "States are perfectly capable of doing the job once the Supreme Court establishes the exact dividing point between federal and state regulation," he said.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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