Utah's Great Salt Lake is shrinking

Years of drought and over-irrigation have caused Utah's Great Salt Lake to shrink at an alarming rate, recent satellite photos show. (NASA)

By Kacey Deame
Fox News

After the Great Lakes, Utah's Great Salt Lake is the largest body of water (by area) in the United States. Back in the middle of the 19th century, when pioneers first arrived in the area, the lake spread across roughly 1,600 square miles. Now, the lake covers an area of only about 1,050 square miles, new satellite photos from NASA reveal. In October, the Great Salt Lake reached its lowest level in recorded history, at 4,191 feet deep.

These dramatic declines in water levels come from years of human activity — namely, diverting river water, which would normally fill the lake, for agriculture and industry, according to NASA. The agency estimates that about 40 percent of the river's water is diverted from the lake. These activities, along with the ongoing drought in the West, have drained the historic lake. [Gallery: Rainbow of Life in Great Salt Lake]

The NASA images show changes in the Farmington Bay basin of Great Salt Lake, an area that is home to many diverse wildlife, including migratory birds. Decreasing water levels in the Bay not only affect the ecology of the area, but could divert the bird populations who migrate to the basin for food.

"Farmington Bay has been nearly desiccated as the result of the combined effects of drought and water withdrawals from the rivers feeding the lake," Wayne Wurtsbaugh, a watershed sciences researcher at Utah State University, said in a statement. "Farmington Bay is an immensely important feeding area for migratory shorebirds and waterfowl. Even at the low level we have now, it is still important, but the greatly reduced size has diminished its value."

The NASA satellite images show changes in the Farmington Bay basin from 2011 to 2016. Scientists estimate that more than three-quarters of the lake bed is now exposed in the bay, significantly diminishing the food available for wildlife.

In February, Wurtsbaugh and his colleagues released a white paper on how water development has impacted the Great Salt Lake. Their study found that river flow into the basin has been reduced by 39 percent since the middle of the 19th century. Reversing this trend would involve more conservation efforts, especially for agricultural irrigation, which accounts for approximately 63 percent of water usage in Utah, Wurtsbaugh said.

Even with conservation efforts and more ecologically conscious development, the lake could continue to diminish due to climate change, the researchers said.

"A wild card for the fate of the lake is what global climate change may do to the basin,” Wurtsbaugh said. "Warmer air temperatures are projected to lower runoff, but our data shown in the white paper suggests there haven't been climate change effects on the runoff yet."

Researchers map springs across the Mojave Desert

Study of 300 desert springs will provide 'baseline' to track impact of climate change

Hydrogeologist Andy Zdon (left) and Amargosa Conservancy Executive Director Patrick Donnelly measure the water flow and collect other data at a spring in the Mojave Desert. (Photo: Marilyn Chung/The Desert Sun)

Story by Ian James
The Desert Sun

Bouncing down a rocky road in a pickup, two researchers neared their destination: an oasis of palm trees in the desert.

When the unpaved road ended in an impassible collapsed section, they stepped out and continued on foot. Andy Zdon said the approach to this spring was relatively easy. Over five months, he has often had to trek to remote spots while carrying out an exhaustive study of the natural springs across the entire Mojave Desert — an undertaking that has never before been done on this scale.

“I have been living and breathing the desert since September,” Zdon said with a smile. “I’ve done about 300 miles of walking to these springs. We’ve had to do a lot of walking.”

At each spring, Zdon, a hydrogeologist, has collected data about how much water is flowing from the ground and has analyzed the dissolved oxygen content and other properties of the water. The results will enable scientists to monitor changes in the springs, which are critical for wildlife, and document influences such as declines in groundwater levels due to pumping, shifts in flows due to weather cycles, and the drying of springs as a result of climate change.

“If you’re going to try to understand the effects of climate on a system, you need a starting point. You need a baseline, and that’s what this is doing,” Zdon said.

“You can’t even begin to understand whether you’re seeing the effects of climate change if you don’t know what the conditions were before you started looking for it, and that’s really the crux of it,” Zdon said. “You can’t manage or identify an impact if you don’t know what your starting point is.”

His study is funded through the Transition Habitat Conservancy, a nonprofit group that obtained a $190,000 grant from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to carry out surveys of springs across the Mojave Desert.

Working alongside Zdon was Patrick Donnelly, a biologist and executive director of the Amargosa Conservancy, who was helping to take notes. He walked around the spring and rattled off a list of the plants he found: California fan palm (42 of them), honey mesquite, oleander, date palm and willows, among others.

Zdon spotted birds including a black-throated sparrow, house finches and white-crowned sparrow. They took down all of those details in their notes.

“The springs in the desert are really the beating heart of the desert,” Donnelly said.

Animals ranging from bighorn sheep to hummingbirds depend on the water holes. Zdon has also seen signs of other animals including mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes and badgers.

If some of the isolated springs and wetlands dry up as the climate heats up, the animals that depend on those water sources could disappear.

Data on desert springs has been collected sporadically over the years, but not in a systematic way.

“So this is really meant to be a baseline for the entire desert,” Donnelly said, “to understand the water in this desert and how we can protect it.”

During their outing in February, the two visited springs in California’s Amargosa Basin, an area rich in wildlife east of Death Valley National Park and a short drive from the Nevada border. Zdon was nearing the end of his study, which covers a total of 312 springs.

“This is number 296 since September,” Zdon said as he began his work at Chappo Spring.

Around the lush vegetation stood the ruins of a homestead abandoned years ago, an old chicken coop and the rusty skeletons of cars. Zdon said that decades ago, people grew crops and raised livestock at the spring.

Many of the springs he has surveyed are on federal lands, and his research will provide the Bureau of Land Management with information that can be used to make decisions about how different areas are managed.

Zdon walked into the thicket of palm trees to get closer to a pool of water. He pulled out an instrument to test the water, and he read off the pH, temperature and total dissolved solids while Donnelly took notes.

“Wow, this is the best water we’ve seen,” Donnelly said.

“Yeah, it’s pretty good water,” Zdon replied.

But Zdon said the spring’s flow has declined dramatically from 1928, when a U.S. Geological Survey report stated that it was flowing at about 80 gallons a minute. Zdon said he had measured the flow a couple of months earlier and found the spring was discharging about 8 gallons a minute.

“Now it’s essentially just a freestanding puddle and we can’t even see flow,” Zdon said. He noted his observations about the spring on a form for the BLM: “functional, at risk, with a downward trend.”

Some springs have completely dried up elsewhere in the California desert. And while it’s challenging for researchers to differentiate between the effects of climate change, groundwater pumping and natural drought cycles, all of those influences are likely affecting springs.

“No two springs are alike,” Zdon said. At this spring, he said, the decline in flow might be related to decades of overpumping the aquifer around the nearby town of Pahrump, Nevada, as well as years of drier conditions in the area.

Zdon has been compiling the results of his research for a report that will be released later this year.

Near another spring, Donnelly pointed out ancient grinding holes in the rock, apparently left behind centuries ago by Southern Paiute Indians who depended on the spring.

He said some of the locals in the area have said there used to be a creek flowing from the spring. Now it’s a small water hole next to a cottonwood tree and a thicket of mesquite.

“I’m going to take a water sample here,” Zdon said. He collected the water in a small glass bottle and put a label on it. The sample, he said, will be sent to a lab for isotope analysis, which can indicate whether the spring water fell as rain or snow and in which area the water seeped down into the ground.

Nearby, he pointed out a pipe sticking out of the ground: a monitoring well that was installed to keep track of water levels.

The data Zdon has collected at the springs could also help conservation groups such as the Transition Habitat Conservancy target areas to protect. The Nature Conservancy also provided funding to support the research.

As he walked around one of the springs, Zdon said excitedly: “That’s a long-eared owl!” It soared off a tree branch and disappeared. Moments later, Zdon stopped to listen to a squeaky chitter. “That’s a hummingbird!”

“This is one of my favorite places on Earth,” Donnelly said. “When I need a break from the world, I come out here and put a chair underneath that cottonwood.”

Donnelly said the huge effort involved in surveying the springs will pay off by producing valuable information about the conditions on the ground today, which will in turn help people spot the influences that will affect the springs in the years to come.

“These springs are very important because they’re very much indicators of the health of our aquifer,” he said. “Because we’re dealing with such an understudied resource, you know, we’re really developing those baselines as we speak.”

Reid: Cattlemen have lost over half their rangeland in the last 30 years... 'because of climate change.'

By Susan Jones
CNS News

It may not be tomorrow, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says "something will happen" to force a Nevada rancher to obey a court order to stop grazing his cattle on federal land and pay his grazing fees.

"It's obvious that you can't just walk away from this," Reid said in an April 18 interview with a Nevada's KSNV-TV News 3 program “What’s Your Point?”

"You can't have a law that is -- we're a nation of laws, not of men and women," he said.

Reid noted that most cattlemen pay their taxes, pay their fees, and follow the law, but he said rancher Cliven Bundy didn't do any of those things.

Reid again denounced the 600 people who came to Bundy's ranch, armed with "sniper rifles" and "assault rifles," to defend the him and his family.

"So 600 people -- if there were ever an example of people who were domestic violent terrorist wannabes, these were the guys. And I think that we should call it that way."

Reid made it clear that he wasn't calling the Bundys domestic terrorists. "I said the people that came there were...And I said, if these people think they're patriots, they're not...If they're patriots, we're in trouble."

Appearing on the program with Reid, Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) called Bundy and his supporters "patriots," noting that there were veterans, Boy Scouts, even grandparents at the protest.

Heller said he was more troubled by the Bureau of Land Management "coming in with a paramilitary army" to round up the Bundy's cattle. "And to have your own government with sniper lenses on you made a lot of people very uncomfortable."

Heller is calling for congressional hearings on the standoff. He says the crux of the problem is the fact that the federal government owns 85 percent of Nevada lands, and he also expressed concern about armed wing of the government -- "200 armed men" moving on private citizens.

"I want to find out who's accountable for this," Heller said. "I hope someone at the BLM feels some accountability on exactly what happened, and I fear that there will be no answer to that question."

Heller noted that in the last 30 years, cattlemen have lost over half the rangeland on which their cattle can graze.

"That's because of climate change," Reid cut in. "We have wildfires that have decimated cowboy land."

Heller said rangeland burns precisely because cattle don't graze. Wait until the sage grouse is listed as an endangered species, Heller added. "I tell you, every cattleman here knows that...their lifespan of their occupation is short. Wait 'til the sage grouse comes."

Iconic Mojave Joshua trees in race against extinction

Researcher Chris Smith checks blooms to see if field assistant Candace Fallon will be able to introduce Yucca moths to blooms on Joshua trees in the Mojave desert during research on Apr. 07, 2011. The iconic plant of the Mojave Desert also provides a perfect example of what scientists call coevolution. The Joshua Tree and the Yucca moth have developed together and now they depend on each other for reproduction. (JESSICA EBELHAR/LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL)

By HENRY BREAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

A century from now, the Mojave Desert’s iconic plant could be pushing its way into new territory or teetering on the brink of extinction.

This spring, a pair of researchers will go looking for clues to the Joshua tree’s fate in a lonesome valley 140 miles north of Las Vegas. And they’re inviting interested “citizen scientists” to join them in their search.

Henderson-based ecologist Todd Esque, from the U.S. Geological Survey, and evolutionary biologist Chris Smith, from Willamette University in Salem, Ore., are offering a four-day course in March called “The Race North: Population Ecology of Joshua Trees In an Era of Climate Change.”

The class will unfold in Tikaboo Valley, near the Lincoln County town of Rachel, where Smith said Joshua trees seem to be “experiencing something of a population boom” at the northern limit of their current range, possibly in response to increasingly warmer, drier conditions to the south.

Such research matters, Esque said, because it could help scientists predict how much of a challenge climate change will pose for Joshua trees and for people. “We’re all in this together,” he said.

“Any time these large climatic events occur, some things blink out and some things survive and create new species,” he said. “If Joshua trees can respond quickly enough and spread their seeds far enough with each jump, they will continue to thrive out there.”

“It’s a population on the move as far as I’m concerned.”

Some computer models predict the Joshua tree could disappear from much of the Mojave Desert, as average temperatures rise and droughts grow longer and more frequent.

Smith said scientists have found evidence that the trees are already fading from parts of Joshua Tree National Park at the southern end of its range.

Tikaboo Valley serves as an ideal “natural laboratory” for studying the species because that’s where the two main varieties of Joshua tree — one from the east, the other from the west — come together and mix.

“It is possible to do a side-by-side comparison of which of the two plants are likely to win ‘The Race North,’ and how the reliance on specialized pollinators might limit their capacity to escape changing climate,” Smith said in an email.

This is his area of expertise. Smith has spent the past decade studying the highly specialized evolutionary bond between the Joshua tree and the tiny moth that pollinates it.

Each spring, yucca moths emerge from the ground to mate and lay eggs in the flowers of Joshua trees in Nevada, California and Arizona. But unlike bees and other insects that inadvertently spread pollen from flower to flower, these moths appear to deliberately pollinate Joshua trees so that the plants will produce seeds that eventually will feed the moth’s caterpillars when they hatch.

Simply put, the Joshua tree would not exist without the plain-looking moth about the length of a pencil eraser, and the moth would not exist without the tree.

Smith is studying how natural selection is involved in shaping this tight relationship between plant and insect — and whether their bond can live through climate change and the tree’s own race for survival. Last year, he received a prestigious, $850,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to continue his research for the next five years at least.

For his part, Esque has spent 10 years trying to produce the first comprehensive understanding of the tree’s life history. Along the way, he has amassed one of the most complete sets of data about where the trees occur and co-authored a study showing that only the largest, oldest Joshuas tend to survive wildfires — a finding Smith called “worrying” since fires have become more common in the Mojave Desert.

This marks the second time Smith has hosted a citizen science expedition to the Tikaboo Valley. He offered a similar class last year, minus the emphasis on climate change.

Registration is now underway for the course, which is being sponsored by the Desert Institute at Joshua Tree National Park in California. It takes place March 21-24 and costs $260, not including food, lodging, supplies and transportation to and from Tikaboo Valley.

Esque said the class will begin with a lecture on “why are we here and why does it matter.” Then the group will divide up into teams and walk the valley with GPS units, measuring trees and collecting genetic samples.

On the final day, Smith, Esque and their students will discuss what the collected data might tell them about the Joshua tree’s march north through Nevada and whether the species can survive long enough to get wherever it’s going.

The West Wants Out of the Western Climate Initiative

by Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post

The Western Climate Initiative’s cap and trade market may soon need to be renamed The Canada Climate Initiative.

Until this week, the Western Climate Initiative boasted seven U.S. states and four Canadian provinces who were working toward the launch of a regional cap and trade system on Jan 1, 2012. On Thursday, Arizona formally announced it was backing out of cap and trade. As the state with the fastest rate of emission growth -- 61% between 1990 and 2007 – many feared a body blow to Arizona’s economy if it tried to meet the initiative’s carbon reduction goals.

The following morning neighbouring Utah indicated it might follow suit. By a 6 to 2 vote, its House Committee on Public Utilities and Technology passed a nonbinding resolution to urge Governor Gary Herbert to pull out of the Western Climate Initiative. Earlier in the week, the full Utah House voted resoundingly – 56 to 17 – to curb any carbon-curbing attempts by the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency. Specifically, the resolution “urges the United States Environmental Protection Agency to halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and with its ‘Endangerment Finding’ and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.”

To date, only four of the 11 jurisdictions have adopted legislation that would allow them to participate in the cap-trade-market: California, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, with Manitoba appearing close to joining.

Oregon, Washington, Montana and New Mexico have not yet adopted cap-and-trade legislation and now California, which is tottering toward bankruptcy, has become iffy: A voter initiative in California, if it passes in November, would halt the cap-and-trade program until unemployment falls to 5.5%.

The upshot? By the end of the year, the only jurisdictions left in the Western Climate Initiative’s cap and trade program could be the Canadian provinces.

Arizona Quits Climate Pact

EDITORIAL
Investor's Business Daily

Cap-And-Trade: The Grand Canyon State avoids a big economic hole by suspending its participation in a multistate initiative to fight climate change. As climate fraud is exposed, economic reality sets in. Will California follow?

Not since King Canute have government officials engaged in an exercise as futile as in 2007, when seven U.S. states and four Canadian provinces got together to form something called the Western Regional Climate Action Initiative to reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions starting in 2012.

Leading the charge for the pact was California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who insisted, "We cannot wait for the United States government to get its act together on the environment." At the time he said the regional agreement "sets the stage for a regional cap-and-trade program which will provide a powerful framework for developing a national cap-and-trade program."

Since then, the nation has slid into a recession, and the only thing man-made about climate change has been the manipulated and manufactured claims that we are doomed if we don't act to fight it.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, seeing which way the snow is blowing, has issued an executive order saying her state will suspend its participation in the emission-control plan or any program that could raise costs for businesses and consumers.

Arizona joined the climate initiative under its previous governor, Janet Napolitano, now secretary of homeland security in the Obama administration.

All 50 states agreed to the cap-and-trade pact, but left implementation up to each state. Only California is ready to start its program in 2012.

Brewer also ordered Arizona's Environmental Quality Department to take another look at stricter vehicle emission rules, based on California's standards, set to take effect in 2012, fearing they would significantly raise new car costs. Slowly but surely, economic reality is trumping climate fantasy.

Rumblings of discontent are also being heard in California. Assemblyman Dan Logue is sponsoring an initiative for the November ballot that would halt implementation of the state's global-warming law, Assembly Bill 32, until the state unemployment rate drops to 5.5% from the current 12.4%.

"The state's greenhouse reduction program is not a freebie," Gino DiCaro, a spokesman for the California Manufacturers & Technology Association, said last month. "Large costs foisted on an unemployment-riddled state economy and increased electricity rates ... are not affordable at this time, if ever."

A 2009 study by economists at California State University, Sacramento, and commissioned by the California Small Business Roundtable found implementation costs for AB32 "could easily exceed $100 billion" and that by 2020 the program would raise the cost of living by $7,857 per household per year.

Even the most optimistic assessments of global pacts such as Copenhagen and Kyoto would have moderated at great cost the earth's temperature by an amount too small to measure. The impact of a regional pact by a handful of states would be futile, especially when they are downwind from the world's biggest polluter, the "developing" nation of China, which is exempt from such global pacts.

Not long ago, the New York Times reported that a new coal-fired power plant big enough to serve San Diego comes on line in China every seven to 10 days, exporting more pollution to California and the West than such draconian proposals would ever hope to curb. The pact also envisions strict emission limits on American cars at a time China has passed the U.S. as the world's largest auto market.

One of the supporters of the initiative to suspend AB32 is Ted Costa of the People's Advocate, a Sacramento-based anti-tax group. "Look at what happened in Massachusetts," said Costa, who was active in the successful 2003 effort to recall former Gov. Gray Davis. "I see that happening with AB32. Blue-collar workers think the government has gone too far. We're told we're somehow warming the planet. But they don't see the evidence."

As much of the nation lies under a blanket of snow, neither do we. But the political climate is about to change.

Utah delivers vote of no confidence for 'climate alarmists'

The US's most Republican state passes bill disputing science of climate change, claiming emissions are 'essentially harmless'

Suzanne Goldenberg
guardian.co.uk

Carbon dioxide is "essentially harmless" to human beings and good for plants. So now will you stop worrying about global warming?

Utah's House of Representatives apparently has at least. Officially the most Republican state in America, its political masters have adopted a resolution condemning "climate alarmists", and disputing any scientific basis for global warming.

The measure, which passed by 56-17, has no legal force, though it was predictably claimed by climate change sceptics as a great victory in the wake of the controversy caused by a mistake over Himalayan glaciers in the UN's landmark report on global warming.

But it does offer a view of state politicians' concerns in Utah which is a major oil and coal producing state.

The original version of the bill dismissed climate science as a "well organised and ongoing effort to manipulate and incorporate "tricks" related to global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome". It accused those seeking action on climate change of riding a "gravy train" and their efforts would "ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty".

In the heat of the debate, the representative Mike Noel said environmentalists were part of a vast conspiracy to destroy the American way of life and control world population through forced sterilisation and abortion.

By the time the final version of the bill came to a vote, cooler heads apparently prevailed. The bill dropped the word "conspiracy", and described climate science as "questionable" rather than "flawed".

However, it insisted – against all evidence – that the hockey stick graph of changing temperatures was discredited. It also called on the federal government's Environmental Protection Agency to order an immediate halt in its moves to regulate greenhouse gas emissions "until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated".

As Noel explained: "Sometimes ... we need to have the courage to do nothing."

It’s the economy: District asks Governator to suspend climate change law

By Charlie Morasch
Land Line Magazine

One California air quality management district is asking California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to suspend a state global warming law, thereby killing several corresponding diesel regulations until the state’s decimated economy rebounds.

The Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District recently sent a four-page letter to Schwarzenegger asking the governor to suspend Assembly Bill 32 – the 2006 law that gave the California Air Resources Board the power to create and enforce emissions rules aimed at curbing global warming.

Several trucking regulations – including CARB’s Port Drayage Rule, its On-Road Truck and Bus Rule, and the SmartWay (retrofit) rule – were created under the authority of A.B. 32.

“Within the (air district’s) jurisdiction – we are rapidly approaching “regulatory gridlock” which not only threatens to cripple the local and regional economy, but also hinders our agency’s ability to adequately protect the local air quality and health of our residents,” the letter states.

“While we believe the goals of many of the legislative and regulatory enactments behind A.B. 32 are laudable and necessary, we are finding that, in an area of unique economic and regulatory challenges like ours, there are serious conflicts among existing and potential proposed regulatory programs.”

In the letter, the air district board noted that nearly 50 percent of the district’s residents commute at least 40 miles each way to work, and that 200,000 cars travel to and from the high desert area every workday.

“The MDAQMD Governing Board thus urges you to support any and all efforts to suspend further implementation of A.B. 32 until some, if not all, of these conflicts have been looked at and potentially resolved,” the letter states. “The Governing Board understands that its request may involve a repeal or substantial reworking of the climate change effort in California, but we must do what is necessary.”

The letter stated that regulatory air quality requirements have made new renewable energy projects “nearly impossible to site within” the air district’s jurisdiction.

In addition to A.B. 32, the district has to continue to meet obligations under Clean Air Act, National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone and faces the potential of federal law enforcement of cap-and-trade proposals already approved in the U.S. House and being considered in the Senate.

“With a 16.6 percent average unemployment range looming large over our jurisdiction, we believe any additional mandates which impose even higher fees and more stringent requirements on local industry put us at a competitive disadvantage with neighboring states which are not regulating greenhouse gases as stringently, if they are regulating it at all,” the letter states.

California is divided into 35 local air districts that enforce CARB emissions regulations. Each district has a governing board as well as employees. The districts are funded mostly by citation fees, said Eldon Heaston, executive director.

Mike Rothschild, a governing board member for the Mojave Desert air district and Mayor Pro-Tem for Victorville, CA, said A.B. 32’s many provisions are hurting California.

“This is killing the economy!” Rothschild said. “Right now, with the economy as bad as it is, people don’t understand that if you want to go into business, you’re buried in this pile of regulations.”

Rothschild, who has served on the local air board for 17 years, said he’s been contacted by many people who support the board’s request to suspend the global warming law.

“We’re not the only ones,” said Rothschild. “If the governor gets his head in the game and realizes this is a real job killer, and an expense to doing business here, maybe we’ll get it back.”

The Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District has been contacted by other air districts considering sending their own such request to the state.

Rothschild said he hopes other air districts will follow suit.

“We have the toughest state emissions standards in the whole United States,” Rothschild said. “Why? No better reason than people thinking they’re saving the planet. In the process, they’re shutting down California.”

Three Things You Absolutely Must Know About Climategate

by Iain Murray
Pajamas Media

They’re calling it “Climategate.” The scandal that the suffix –gate implies is the state of climate science over the past decade or so revealed by a thousand or so emails, documents, and computer code sets between various prominent scientists released following a leak from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

This may seem obscure, but the science involved is being used to justify the diversion of literally trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out fossil fuels. The CRU is the Pentagon of global warming science, and these documents are its Pentagon Papers.

Here are three things everyone should know about the Climategate Papers. Links are provided so that the full context of every quote can be seen by anyone interested.

First, the scientists discuss manipulating data to get their preferred results. The most prominently featured scientists are paleoclimatologists, who reconstruct historical temperatures and who were responsible for a series of reconstructions that seemed to show a sharp rise in temperatures well above historical variation in recent decades.

In 1999, Phil Jones, the head of CRU, wrote to activist scientist Michael “Mike” Mann that he has just “completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps … to hide the decline”(0942777075). This refers to a decline in temperatures in recent years revealed by the data he had been reconstructing that conflicted with the observed temperature record. The inconvenient data was therefore hidden under a completely different set of data. Some “trick.”

Mann later (2003) announced that “it would be nice to try to ‘contain’ the putative ‘MWP,’ even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back” (1054736277). The MWP is the Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures may have been higher than today. Mann’s desire to “contain” this phenomenon even in the absence of any data suggesting that this is possible is a clear indication of a desire to manipulate the science. There are other examples of putting political/presentational considerations before the science throughout the collection.

Secondly, scientists on several occasions discussed methods of subverting the scientific peer review process to ensure that skeptical papers had no access to publication. In 2003, Tom Wigley of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, complained that paleoclimatologist Hans von Storch was responsible for “the publication of crap science ‘in order to stimulate debate’” and that they “must get rid of von Storch” (1051190249) as an editor of the journal Climate Research (he indeed subsequently resigned).

This could prove to be climate science's Vietnam.

In 2005, Michael Mann said that there was a “fundamental problem w/ GRL now,” referring to the journal Geophysical Research Letters published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU), because “they have published far too many deeply flawed contrarian papers in the past year or so” and “it is probably best to do an end run around GRL now where possible.” Tom Wigley responded that “we could go through official AGU channels to get him [the editor of GRL] ousted” (1106322460). A few months later, the editor of GRL having left his post, Mann comments, “The GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/ new editorial leadership there” (1132094873).

Having seemingly succeeded with Climate Research and Geophysical Research Letters, the most recent target of the scientists’ ire has been Weather, a journal of the Royal Meteorological Society (RMS). Phil Jones commented in March 2009, “I’m having a dispute with the new editor of Weather. I’ve complained about him to the RMS Chief Exec. If I don’t get him to back down, I won’t be sending any more papers to any RMS journals and I’ll be resigning from the RMS” (1237496573).

This issue is all the more important because the scientists involved in these discussions have repeatedly accused their critics of being irrelevant because they fail to publish in the peer reviewed literature. For example, in October this year, Mr. Mann told Andy Revkin of the New York Times:

[L]egitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in particular the peer review process. Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre [the target of much of the criticism in the CRU Papers] who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.

If you are saying on the one hand that you will not take notice of someone until they have been published while on the other you are working behind the scenes to stop any such publication, I would venture to suggest that you are not operating with any degree of bona fides either towards the media or the legitimate scientific process.

Finally, the scientists worked to circumvent the Freedom of Information process of the United Kingdom. Nowhere is this better evidenced than in the email reproduced in full below (minus Dr. Jones’ contact details):

From: Phil Jones To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t
have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil

The context in the subject header is clearly the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI), while AR4 refers to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What is most important to know here is that, according to the Taxpayers’ Alliance in the UK, “at least one FOI request on exactly this correspondence had apparently been submitted by a David Holland on May 5th 2008.”

The Freedom of Information Act, however, explicitly forbids deletion of any material subject to a FOI request. The penalty for such a criminal act is a fine of up to £5,000. Presumably being found guilty of such an act, or even suggesting it, would also bring about significant disciplinary procedures at any reputable university. A complaint has been made to the British information commissioner.

This is, however, just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to attitudes toward FOI. Numerous other references are made about ways to avoid divulging information (the following summaries are by the blogger Bishop Hill):

Tom Wigley discusses how to deal with the advent of FoI law in UK. Jones says use IPR argument to hold onto code. Says data is covered by agreements with outsiders and that CRU will be “hiding behind them.”(1106338806)

Jones says that UK climate organisations are coordinating themselves to resist FoI. They got advice from the Information Commissioner [!](1219239172)

Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. (1107454306)

There appears to be a prima facie case that there was a conspiracy to prevent the release of information subject to FOI.

There are many other disturbing revelations in the CRU Papers, including a particularly disturbing assessment by a computer programmer of the state of CRU data. These have yet to be fully analyzed.

So what does this all mean? It does not mean that there is no warming trend or that mankind has not been responsible for at least some of the warming. To claim that as result of these documents is clearly a step too far. However, it is clear that at least one branch of climate science — paleoclimatology — has become hopelessly politicized to the point of engaging in unethical and possibly illegal behavior.

To the extent that paleoclimatology is an important part of the scientific case for action regarding global warming, urgent reassessments need to be made. In the meantime, all those responsible for political action on global warming should stop the process pending the results of inquiries, investigations, and any criminal proceedings. What cannot happen is the process carrying on as if nothing has happened.

This could prove to be climate science’s Vietnam.

Iain Murray is Vice-President for Strategy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, and author of "The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven environmental catastrophes liberals don't want you to know about - because they helped cause them," from Regnery.

Desert icon Joshua trees are vanishing, scientists say

Mike Cipra, a desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, examines a burned Joshua tree showing signs of growth. Scientists say the effects of global warming could make Joshuas extinct within a century. (Kurt Miller / The Press-Enterprise)

By JANET ZIMMERMAN
The Press-Enterprise

A breeze stirs the silence at Joshua Tree National Park as a red-tailed hawk takes flight from the spiky arm of one of the namesake plants in search of breakfast.

It's a scene that national parks protector Mike Cipra has witnessed many times. Still, he can't contain his enthusiasm on this early morning outing, despite the gloomy topic he's discussing with a visitor -- the probable extinction of the Joshua tree in the park that bears its name.

The ancient plants are dying in the park, the southern-most boundary of their limited growing region, scientists say. Already finicky reproducers, Joshua trees are the victim of global warming and its symptoms -- including fire and drought -- plus pollution and the proliferation of non-native plants. Experts expect the Joshuas to vanish entirely from the southern half of the state within a century.

The loss would be devastating, said Cipra, who is California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit group that evaluates conditions at national parks and lobbies for their preservation.

"Joshua trees aren't just iconic pictures on a postcard. They're essential to a functioning ecosystem," he said. "We're going to be losing a lot of what makes this place special."

The quirky, almost comical trees are really plants, a relative of the yucca.

Pictured on U2's 1987 album "The Joshua Tree," they look like desert sentries, with fibrous trunks and twisting, outstretched arms.

Joshua trees are a foundation species, providing habitat for other animals that otherwise would disappear, said Cipra, 34, his brown boots crunching on the desert floor as he surveys the boulder-studded Queen Valley. Besides the foraging hawk and a scrub jay calling nearby, there are Scott's orioles that build hanging nests in the trees, rodents that pry food from its seed pods and the Yucca night lizard, the smallest lizard in North America, which nests under its fallen branches, he said.

Growing up in Long Beach, Cipra discovered Joshua trees at 16, when he asked his parents if he could ditch school to camp and explore with a friend in what was then the national monument. The city boy, who went on to USC on an academic scholarship, drew up a list of reasons he wanted to visit the park, top among them the variety of animals he would see.

Cipra said his experience in the desert was life-changing. He went on to become an interpretive ranger at the park -- where his wife works as a biologist -- and now lobbies for governmental policy to protect it. Among the causes he supports is the pending congressional cap-and-trade plan that would limit carbon dioxide emissions and provide money from refiners and power plants to manage the effects of climate change.

"Some experiences in the natural world can be transformative. That's the power of national parks," Cipra said.

'Worst-case scenario'

Predictions for the fate of the Joshua trees, and the web of life they support, are based on six models of climate change developed by Ken Cole, a biologist and geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz., and plant ecologist Kirsten Ironside of Northern Arizona University.

In all of the climate models that looked ahead 100 years, there were no new trees in Joshua Tree National Park, and significant death of existing trees.

"With the Joshua tree, it's like a worst-case scenario. Maybe 80 percent of the current populations will be unable to persist," he said.

The plants were prolific and widespread 11,000 years ago, Cole said, when their seeds were carried long distances from Mexico north to Nevada in the dung of the Shasta ground sloth, now extinct. Now, seeds are transported only short distances by rodents.

The future will bring a temperature increase of about seven degrees, similar to the change between the Ice Age and modern time, Cole said, and with that will come drought and fires.

Fires in Joshua Tree National Park used to be rare, occurring every 50 to 100 years, he said. But in the 1970s, the frequency of fires in the park increased to every three to 10 years.

Fires are fed by non-native plants such as red brome and cheatgrass that remain dry after wildflowers and other natives blow away. Where there used to be dirt patches between vegetation, the invasive grasses provide a continuous bed of tinder that carries fire from plant to plant, he said.

As an example, park spokesman Joe Zarki points to the largest blaze in park history, the Juniper Complex Fire of 1999. Caused by a lightning strike and fed by non-native grasses, the blaze consumed almost 14,000 acres of century-old junipers, pinyon pines, scrub oak and healthy Joshua tree forests, and forced evacuation of the west end of the park. The invasive species, often transported along roads by passing cars, feed on the nitrate and ammonium deposited in the soil by car emissions. Edith Allen, a UC Riverside professor of plant ecology, has found that the levels of those chemicals in the park are 15 to 30 times higher than those in an undisturbed ecosystem.

The park has changed its policy on fires from letting them burn to suppressing them entirely because so much habitat was being destroyed. It can take as long as 200 years for some desert plants to mature.

"The big question that a lot of people are asking about Joshua trees and plants in general: 'Can they (plants) move into new habitats fast enough to keep pace with climate change?' They are running a very slow race," said Christopher Smith, an assistant professor of biology at Willamette University in Salem, Ore.

"The current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher than at any time in the past million years of the Earth's history, and it is clear beyond any reasonable doubt that increasing carbon dioxide will cause the Earth's climate to warm very rapidly," he said.

Park scientists are trying to prevent the spread of the invasive grasses into new areas of the park through monitoring and removal.

They also are encouraging re-vegetation after fires by planting "seed islands," sprouts of native plants surrounded by fencing and a slow-release watering gel. One of those plants, blackbrush, is critical to development of new Joshua trees. The Joshuas grow through the middle of the dry, prickly bush, which protects seedlings from gnawing rabbits and rodents.

No new trees

The National Park Service is grappling with a plan for dealing with climate change. The agency is waiting for national direction on the issue, and so far there is no battle plan, said Zarki, the park spokesman.

Eventually, it could mean mass plantings of Joshua trees and other threatened species, but that raises ethical and logistical questions that are far from being resolved, said Todd Esque, a research ecologist with the USGS in Henderson, Nev. Among those considerations is the source of the seed; purists emphasize local seed to preserve existing resources, while other advocate hybridized seeds to help the plants respond to change, he said.

While Joshua trees will be the losers in the global warming lottery, other plants will thrive.

Palm Springs biologist Jim Cornett, who has studied Joshua trees throughout the Southwest for 20 years, has found that desert fan palms have dramatically increased in the region, as has saguaro cactus of the Sonoran desert.

Cornett has monitored Joshua trees on 10 study sites in California, Utah, Nevada and Arizona. On all but two of the 2½-acre plots, Joshua trees are dying; at Saddleback Butte State Park near Lancaster, there hasn't been a new tree in 20 years.

But in the upper elevations of Cima Dome, in Mojave National Preserve north of Joshua Tree National Park, and Lee Flat at Death Valley National Park, the plants are flourishing, he said. They also are prospering in Tonapah, Nev., their northern boundary where none existed a century ago because it was too cold. Those locations provide more rainfall and the winter cold snaps necessary for the Joshua trees to flower and produce seeds, he said.

Cornett blames the plant deaths on drought, which could be a result of global warming, he said. After each period of drought, more new Joshua trees died off, he said. That included the 42-foot Emily's tree, the largest in Joshua Tree National Park, which was estimated to be 150 to 300 years old when it died three years ago.

"The good news is that humans have the capacity to slow down this rate of climate change and to minimize these impacts," Cornett said. "Other animals don't have that capacity. They're helpless witnesses."

Senator Raises Stink about Possible Tax on Livestock Flatulence

By U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan
USAgNet.com









In response to an Environmental Protection Agency report citing the amount of greenhouse gases produced by the belching and flatulence of cows and pigs, U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota introduced legislation, the Livestock Emissions Tax Ban Act, prohibiting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from initiating a fee on livestock owners for gaseous emissions under the Clean Air Act. Agricultural groups like the Farm Bureau have expressed concerns that the EPA's actions could eventually lead to taxes on ranchers' livestock.

"If you ever wonder why the American people view their government with distrust, just refer to this weekend's news about the deep thinking going on at the Environmental Protection Agency," said Dorgan. "In their pursuit to control global warming, somebody in the bowels of EPA's headquarters in Washington is examining greenhouse gases that come from the belching and flatulence coming from cows and pigs.

"We face a lot of serious challenges these days, but methane from cow and pig flatulence isn't among them," said Dorgan. "We expect these federal agencies to use some common sense as they develop public policy, and clearly there are much more important issues facing our nation than this one."

"So, just to clear the air (legislatively), I have introduced legislation that would prevent the EPA from implementing any scheme that would tax or otherwise charge farmers and ranchers for the methane emitted by their animals," he said. "The EPA, in response to the public disclosure of the recommendations, says that it is not proposing a tax. Maybe so. But I want to make sure they will never be able to implement a plan to charge farmers and ranchers for their animals' natural emissions."

Farmers target EPA report they say might tax cows

By BOB JOHNSON
Associated Press




MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — For farmers, this stinks: Belching and gaseous cows and hogs could start costing them money if the federal government decides to charge fees for air-polluting animals.

Farmers so far are turning their noses up at the notion, which they contend is a possible consequence of an Environmental Protection Agency report after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases from motor vehicles amounts to air pollution.

"This is one of the most ridiculous things the federal government has tried to do," said Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, an outspoken opponent of the fees.

EPA officials insisted Friday that the lengthy, highly technical report, which mostly focuses on other sources of air pollution, does not include a proposal to tax livestock.

But the American Farm Bureau Federation said, based on federal agriculture department figures, it would require farms or ranches with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs to pay an annual fee of about $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and $20 for each hog.

The executive vice president of the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, Ken Hamilton, estimated the fee would cost owners of a modest-sized cattle ranch $30,000 to $40,000 a year. He said he has talked to a number of livestock owners about the proposals, and "all have said if the fees were carried out, it would bankrupt them."

Sparks said Wednesday he's worried the fee could be extended to chickens and other farm animals and cause more meat to be imported.

"We'll let other countries put food on our tables like they are putting gas in our cars. Other countries don't have the health standards we have," Sparks said.

The farm groups say the fee would apply to farms with livestock operations that emit more than 100 tons of carbon emissions in a year and fall under federal Clean Air Act provisions.

EPA officials said the agency has not taken a position on any of the matters discussed in its response to the Supreme Court ruling. And John Millett, a spokesman for EPA's air and radiation division, said there has been an oversimplification of the EPA's document "to the point of distortion."

"EPA is not proposing any type of tax on livestock," he said.

The EPA briefly mentions "raising livestock" in its report on ways to regulate greehnouse gases under the provisions of the Clean Air Act. Paul Schlegel, director of public policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation, said it determined the possible fees that could be imposed by using Agriculture Department statistics on the amount of greenhouse gases that come from livestock and applied it to the EPA's permitting rules.

Farmers from across the country have expressed outrage over the EPA report, both on Internet sites and in opinions sent to EPA during a public comment period that ended last week. Many call it a "cow tax" and say the EPA proposed it.

"It's something that really has a very big potential adverse impact for the livestock industry," said Rick Krause, the senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The fee would cover the cost of a permit for the livestock operations. While farmers say it would drive them out of business, an organization supporting the proposal hopes it forces the farms and ranches to switch to healthier crops.

"It makes perfect sense if you are looking for ways to cut down on meat consumption and recoup environmental losses," said Bruce Friedrich, a spokesman in Washington for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

"We certainly support making factory farms pay their fair share," he said.

U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, a Republican from Haleyville in northwest Alabama, said he has spoken with EPA officials and doesn't believe the cow tax is a serious proposal that will ever be adopted by the agency.

"Who comes up with this kind of stuff?" said Perry Mobley, director of the Alabama Farmers Federation's beef division. "It seems there is an ulterior motive, to destroy livestock farms. This would certainly put them out of business."

Off-road people may see impact of dust controls

The Arizona Land Department is considering closing a major portion of state trust land to motorized vehicles. In particular, it would target off-roaders

Editorial

Yuma Sun

Trying to keep the dust from being stirred up in the middle of the desert has always seemed a little futile to us, despite the fact that federal environmental officials insist that it is necessary.

The federal government has certain standards for air quality and one of them involves keeping levels of dust in the air below certain levels. If states or cities do not meet those standards, then they are "punished" by imposition of strict control rules and the eventual loss of federal funding.

Arizona and Yuma County are under the gun for not meeting these dust standards and a number of steps have been required over the years to minimize dust, including watering dirt roads and watering down construction sites.

Now a new wrinkle has been added by the Arizona Land Department for some parts of Maricopa County and Pinal County. The department is considering closing a major portion of state trust land to motorized vehicles. It in particular would target off-roaders.

Four-wheel vehicles, dirt bikes and ATVs would be banned from popular trail areas because the Land Department says they stir up too much dust, raising the potential the state would not meet dust attainment standards and would lose federal road money.

Some off road groups have a different suspicion, and that is that the Land Department just doesn't like off-roaders going into the rugged back country areas, and that it is using the dust attainment rule as an excuse.

There is no proof of that, but the end result would be the same whatever the reason - off-roaders couldn't enjoy their recreational activity. And there are a substantial number of them in Arizona and in our area.

The Associated Press reported that some believe as many as 500,000 people in our state participate in off-roading, with much of the growth in the past decade. There has been as much as a 350 percent increase.

Off-roading is also popular in our area, and keeping within dust containment levels here is an ongoing problem. Could this activity eventually be limited here also? Perhaps.

There needs to be recognition by the federal government that dust is a natural part of our desert environment. Yes, human activity can cause dust, but a big factor is natural causes like the wind. So far, controlling nature is beyond the reach of the government, so they focus on human activity, unfairly imposing impractical standards on dust control.

The federal government needs to back off and accept that dust is natural part of our environment here.

More Bad News for the Global Warmers

Editorial

By Michael R. Fox Ph.D.
Hawaii Reporter

The issue of global warming rages on is some minds. Remarkably, there really hasn’t been much of a debate, not a serious science debate anyway. There have been shouting and screaming, predictions of doom, and the willingness to destroy our energy sources and our economy to “save the planet”. But as P.J. O’Rourke noted, there are a lot of people who would do anything to “save the planet”, except take a science course.

While there hasn’t been a true debate, there has been a hugely one-sided angry monologue, heaping scorn upon those who dare ask for evidence. The one side has been heavily funded by the government, foundations, and individual contributions. The so-called “warmers” have enjoyed the unstinting support of a scientifically illiterate media, the movie industry, and many institutions that have been on the receiving end of an estimated $5 billion annually for nearly 2 decades. That will buy a lot of supporters, Ph.Ds or not.

They have also received a great deal of support from the public school systems, many of which require the student viewing of the latest, mostly discredited, “warmists” scare stories. These are the organized educators of two generations of citizens who have been crippling the citizenry with declining math. and science skills. Too many educators regard the scare stories as received wisdom making the videos required viewing. Too few of the educators are apparently disposed to challenge the scare stories, utterly incapable of asking any hard questions, like “where is the evidence?”.

The world of science is moving quickly past these questionable events in an expanding universe of new evidence, which is showing that the current state of the global warming theory is in serious decline.

For example, the recent summary by Fred Singer and 22 expert contributors to “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate” makes some extraordinary statements about computer models. (In addition to the many excellent contributors, this summary also contains 167 references to the scientific literature).

This is important since computer models are being improperly, yet extensively, used by state legislatures as the basis of policies for greenhouse gas mitigation, rather than using actual climate data taken from the real world. These statements include:

• Computer models do not consider variations of irradiance and magnetic fields of the sun.


• Computer models do not accurately model the role of clouds.


• Computer models do not simulate a possible negative feedback from water vapor.


• Computer models do not explain many features of the Earth’s observed climate.


• Computer models cannot produce reliable predictions of regional climate change.

We must conclude that climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), do not accurately depict our chaotic, open-ended, climate system. They cannot make reliable predictions and should not be used to formulate government policy.

As Christopher Monckton recently admonished, “We must get the science right, or we will get the policy wrong”. Many states such as Hawaii and Washington are well along the way of doing just that.

As a Washington State citizen who was born, raised, and educated in Olympia, with very strong scientific credentials, I am disheartened to see the state, as a matter of policy, muzzle science, terminate debate, and pretend “the science has spoken”. I am also frightened that State leaders would rely so heavily on such dubious computer models to formulate state environmental policies. Atmospheric physicist Jim Peden recently observed “Climate modeling is not science, it is computerized tinkertoys”. This doesn’t inspire confidence or respect in our state officials to formulate the best policies they can. They clearly are not.

In fact, state sponsored repression of science is reminiscent of the sacking of the Library of Alexandria in ancient Egypt. It is reminiscent of the Burning of the Books of Nazi Germany in 1933. It is reminiscent of some of those killed in the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia for the sin of wearing glasses, the user being perceived as being capable of reading, and perhaps, even thinking, unapproved thoughts.

What is the state of Washington trying to hide, trying to accomplish by suppressing science? Stopping science when it is politically convenient? Why teach science if it going to be ignored? Yes, I am ashamed of this type of leadership in my state. There is nothing to be proud of in such repression.

As Dennis Avery recently said, “Let’s have a real debate of the climate evidence. We’ve heard enough from the computers.”

Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., a science and energy reporter for Hawaii Reporter and a science analyist for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, is retired and now lives in Eastern Washington. He has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level. His interest in the communications of science has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows.

Southern California pollution sinking into desert

Orange County Register




Eastbound Interstate 40 in the East Mojave Desert.


Deserts suck.

Suck carbon dioxide, that is. The Mojave Desert is absorbing more of the airborne pollutant than previously thought, says Lynne Fenstermaker, a scientist at the Desert Research Institute in Nevada. And it may be that this nearby desert is doing more than absorbing car exhaust from our freeways. The study by Fenstermaker and colleague Jay Arnone has found that the Mojave can absorb as much carbon dioxide as a temperate forest.

“Without deserts, the annual rate of [man-made] carbon dioxide rise might be twice as rapid as it is presently and might therefore promote more rapid global warming,” Arnone said in a recent news release.

And since deserts make up more than 30 percent of Earth’s land surface, if all deserts were absorbing as much as the Mojave, “then the amount of carbon dioxide taken up each year would match the amount emitted to the atmosphere globally through burning of fossil fuels,” Arnone says.

Carbon dioxide in the Mojave Desert is absorbed both by plants and by micro-organisms in the top layer of the soil. This “microbiotic crust” contains lichens, mosses and blue-green algae. All of these do some type of photosynthesis, which turns carbon dioxide into sugar, which they then use for food.

You wouldn’t think that the sparse vegetation on a desert would be able to take up so much carbon dioxide, but in an El Niño year, where the deserts get a large amount of rainfall, the population of annuals can be quite high, Fenstermaker says. And the more plants there are, the more carbon dioxide they inhale.

At this point, they’re not sure exactly where the carbon dioxide is going. That is, if the vegetation or the soil layer is doing more of the work. But more studies are planned. They also want to take measurements in deserts worldwide, to see if other deserts suck up as much carbon dioxide as the Mojave.

The Mojave study is funded by the Department of Energy, Terrestrial Carbon Processes project.

Renewable-energy push puts all eyes on desert

Federal agency flooded with developer proposals


By Mike Lee
San Diego Union-Tribune


Speculators have filed applications to develop more than 1 million acres of desert in Southern California with solar, wind and geothermal power plants, setting up a classic clash over land use with environmentalists and off-road enthusiasts.

They have submitted at least 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees all of the territory, in recent years and especially since 2007. The interest is so hot that even if many of the projects fall through, the remaining ones would change the look of the arid landscape.

California, particularly the southern half, is the epicenter of the nation's push for renewable energy. While some of the bureau's parcels in the state already contain wind and geothermal facilities, the agency hasn't approved any solar project here or elsewhere.

Last week, leaders for the bureau called a timeout in accepting new applications for solar developments, the most active category of renewable-energy proposals. They want to assess the environmental, social and economic impacts of such activity in the Southwest, starting with public meetings this month.

Despite state and local demands to increase production of renewable power and growing concern about fossil fuels' influence on global warming, the agency “did not anticipate the level of interest that was shown in 2007 and in the first part of 2008. The applications started coming in fast and furious,” said Linda Resseguie, manager of the solar review process in Washington, D.C.

Although many of the bureau's properties may look barren, they generate interest from environmental and recreation groups. Off-roaders are fighting to keep their open space in spots such as Imperial County's Truckhaven, while conservationists are vying to preserve relatively pristine stretches of desert by encouraging renewable-energy projects for existing homes and businesses.

“We have worked for decades to protect the desert. . . . Let's not trash what we've saved,” said Elden Hughes, who has worked with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups for decades.

David Hubbard, a Carlsbad lawyer for off-road vehicle organizations, expressed concern that “there is almost a feeding frenzy for the desert.”

Officials for the Bureau of Land Management said they are trying to balance the mounting demand to tap renewable sources of energy with the traditional value of desert land as habitat for numerous plants and animals. They said the agency has rejected about a dozen energy applications in recent months because the companies that filed them didn't provide enough information or wanted to use ecologically sensitive lands.

“We try to discourage applicants from applying for projects within the most important habitat areas,” said Alan Stein, a top bureau official in Southern California.

In the past few years, land speculation has been stimulated by tax incentives and state and national policies promoting renewable sources of energy. California aims to get 20 percent of its power from solar, wind and other renewable sources by 2010.

Numerous firms are proposing facilities on bureau-managed lands that, when combined, could provide electricity for more than 20 million homes.

The bureau controls 260 million acres, mainly desert, grassland and high-mountain terrain in the West. That includes about 11 million acres in Southern California, with 183,000 acres in San Diego County.

Unlike some other federal land agencies, the bureau accepts “multiple uses” such as mining, timber harvesting, recreational activities and projects for alternative energy.

Its officials welcome companies' plans for producing alternative power. They have completed an overarching environmental review for wind energy and started one for geothermal development.

“The nation is demanding that renewables help supply our energy needs and the BLM aims to be part of that solution,” said Matt Spangler, a spokesman for the agency in Washington, D.C. “Our vast lands and waters provide boundless opportunities.”

A few applications rolled into the bureau's offices in Southern California before 2005. Then interest spiked last year, when companies filed more than 70 requests for solar projects on bureau land in the region. More proposals are flowing in this year, along with applications for areas in Nevada and Arizona.

Companies can spend $200,000 or more to go through the bureau's energy application process – with no guarantee of final approval.

The agency's leaders said it's not clear how much they will charge for solar leases because they haven't approved a project yet. The price will be based on appraisals of targeted properties.

Fees to rent land for wind projects commonly have been based on how much power each facility produces.

Energy developers use precise measurements of sunlight and wind to gauge the value of specific parcels, and they look for areas with easy access to power lines. Proposed solar projects are clustered near Ridgecrest, Ludlow and Blythe.

Applications to harvest wind energy are concentrated near Palm Springs, Barstow and Tehachapi.

The bureau also might allow more geothermal plants, which tap heat stored underground.

One contentious concept is to build geothermal facilities in the Truckhaven area, a popular off-road playground in western Imperial County. The bureau has finished an environmental impact statement for the spot, anticipating efforts to develop it.

“Off-roaders are sensitive to the fact that we do need renewable energy projects, but . . . our off-road parks could have test wells and ugly pipes running (through them) and that ruins the users' recreation experience,” said Meg Grossglass, spokeswoman for the Bakersfield-based Off-Road Business Association.

Statewide, few projects are attracting as much attention as a solar power complex that would be erected near the Mojave National Preserve.

BrightSource Energy of Oakland looks to build a solar power system that would produce 400 megawatts, enough to power about 300,000 homes. The Ivanpah project would cover 3,400 acres of San Bernardino County.

Company officials hope to start construction next year and begin operating the plant by 2011. Of all solar projects being considered by the Bureau of Land Management, Ivanpah is the furthest along. It likely will set the precedent for other facilities.

“It's the best place in the world to build a solar plant,” said Charlie Ricker, senior vice president of development for BrightSource.

Ricker sees clean-energy projects in the California desert as a necessary step as the United States tries to break away from dirty power sources such as petroleum and coal, which are linked to global warming.

“The good outweighs the fact that some small portion of the desert may not be available for all the kinds of things that desert is used for,” Ricker said.

For some conservationists, power projects such as Ivanpah fall into the same category as nuclear fuel dumps, sewage sludge treatment plants, military bases and landfills that various entities have proposed for desert lands.

“Our take has been from day one, 'Here we go again. Here is where we can do everything out in the desert that we don't want to do in our own backyards in the city,' ” said Terry Weiner, Imperial County conservation coordinator for the San Diego-based Desert Protective Council.

Weiner and others worry that utilities will use alternative-energy projects to justify major new transmission lines such as San Diego Gas & Electric's controversial Sunrise Powerlink project.

They said a better solution is to retrofit homes and businesses with solar panels or put large solar arrays in places where farmers and others already have used the land.

Nature may play role in Arctic thaw

Science in brief

From Los Angeles Times Staff and Wire Reports

There's more to the recent dramatic and alarming thawing of the Arctic region than can be explained by human-caused global warming alone, a new study says. Nature is pushing the Arctic to the edge too.

There's a natural cause that may account for much of the Arctic warming, which has melted sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature.

New research points a finger at a natural and cyclical increase in the amount of energy in the atmosphere that moves from south to north around the Arctic Circle.

Not So Hot

Another Perspective

By Patrick J. Michaels
The American Spectator

If a scientific paper appeared in a major journal saying that the planet has warmed twice as much as previously thought, that would be front-page news in every major paper around the planet. But what would happen if a paper was published demonstrating that the planet may have warmed up only half as much as previously thought?

Nothing. Earlier this month, Ross McKitrick from Canada's University of Guelph and I published a manuscript in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres saying precisely that.

Scientists have known for years that temperature records can be contaminated by so-called "urban warming," which results from the fact that long-term temperature histories tend to have originated at points of commerce. The bricks, buildings, and pavement of cities retain the heat of the day and impede the flow of ventilating winds.

For example, downtown Washington is warmer than nearby (and more rural) Dulles Airport. As government and services expand down the Dulles Access road, it, too, is beginning to warm compared to more rural sites to the west.

Adjusting data for this effect, or using only rural stations, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states with confidence that less than 10% of the observed warming in long-term climate histories is due to urbanization.

That's a wonderful hypothesis, and Ross and I decided to test it.

We noted that other types of bias must still be affecting historical climate records. What about the quality of a national network and the competence of the observers? Other factors include movement or closing of weather stations and modification of local land surfaces, such as replacing a forest with a cornfield.

Many of these are socioeconomic, so we built a computer model that included both regional climatic factors, such as latitude, as well as socioeconomic indicators like GDP and applied it to the IPCC's temperature history.

Weather equipment is very high-maintenance. The standard temperature shelter is painted white. If the paint wears or discolors, the shelter absorbs more of the sun's heat and the thermometer inside will read artificially high. But keeping temperature stations well painted probably isn't the highest priority in a poor country.

IPCC divides the world into latitude-longitude boxes, and for each of these we supplied information on GDP, literacy, amount of missing data (a measure of quality), population change, economic growth and change in coal consumption (the more there is, the cooler the area).

Guess what. Almost all the socioeconomic variables were important. We found the data were of highest quality in North America and that they were very contaminated in Africa and South America. Overall, we found that the socioeconomic biases "likely add up to a net warming bias at the global level that may explain as much as half the observed land-based warming trend."

We then modified IPCC's temperature data for these biases and compared the statistical distribution of the warming to the original IPCC data and to satellite measures of lower atmospheric temperature that have been available since 1979. Since these are from a single source (the U.S. government), and they don't have any urban contamination, they are likely to be affected very little by economic factors.

Indeed. The adjusted IPCC data now looks a lot like the satellite data. The biggest change was that the high (very warm) end of the distribution in the IPCC data was knocked off by the unbiasing process.

Where was the press? A Google search reveals that with the exception of a few blog citations, the only major story ran in Canada's Financial Post.

There are several reasons why the press provides so little coverage to science indicating that global warming isn't the end of the world. One has to do with bias in the scientific literature itself. Theoretically, assuming unbiased climate research, every new finding should have an equal probability of indicating that things are going to be more or less warm, or worse-than-we-thought vs. not-so-bad.

But, when someone finds that there's only half as much warming as we thought, and the story is completely ignored, what does this say about the nature of the coverage itself? Somehow, you'd think that would have been newsworthy.

Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and a member of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Colorado River water deal is reached

Interior secretary: Agreement to share adversity. Shortage could be declared by 2010.

Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times
‘NO SIGN OF ENDING’: The Western drought has left Lake Powell, above, and Lake Mead, the Colorado River’s two mammoth reservoirs, half-empty. One study this year warned that global warming could thrust the Southwest into a permanent drought by 2050.

By Bettina Boxall and Ashley Powers, Staff Writers
Los Angeles Times

LAS VEGAS — The federal government Thursday ushered in a new era of shortage on the Colorado River, adopting a blueprint for how it will tighten the spigot on the West's most important water source.

The guidelines, more than two years in the making, come in the eighth year of the worst drought in the century-long historic record of the Colorado River, which supplies water to 25 million people and 1 million acres of farmland.

Federal water managers say a shortage could be declared as early as 2010, allowing the Department of the Interior to reduce water deliveries to Arizona and Nevada, two of the seven states that have sparred over the waterway for decades. California, which has the biggest water allocation and senior rights in the lower basin, would not be affected.

The drought has left Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the river's two mammoth reservoirs, half-empty, their receding shorelines marked by a wide band of bleached rocks that a decade ago were under water. Without some wet years, Lake Mead may never refill, federal hydrologists say.

"We have had good news and bad news," Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said in a speech before signing the document at the Colorado River Water Users Assn. meeting at Caesars Palace. The bad news, he said, is that the drought shows "no sign of ending."

Scientists also predict that climate change will worsen Western drought patterns and reduce Colorado River flows by increasing evaporation and decreasing snowfall. One study released this year warned that global warming could thrust the Southwest into a state of permanent drought by 2050.

"Runoff in five of the seven Colorado River basin states is projected to decline by more than 15% during the 21st century," Kempthorne said.

Against that backdrop, the basin states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and California began negotiations in 2005 on a blueprint for water shortages.

Their plans formed the basis of the document signed by Kempthorne, who called it "an agreement to share adversity" and a landmark in the tangled history of Colorado River management.

The agreement avoided a nasty and prolonged legal battle among the seven states by tinkering with river law without changing the fundamentals of the 1922 compact that divided the Colorado's flow among them.

Although California's senior rights put it in the best position of the lower basin states, the agreement benefited the state by preventing "bloody legal fights in Congress or the courts," said Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

The guidelines, which will be in effect for the next 19 years, contain three major elements:

* They set particular water-level elevations of Lake Mead as triggers for water cutbacks. The reductions will total less than 10% of the lower basin's allocation. Arizona agriculture will bear the brunt of the shortfall and Nevada a small portion of it.

"California is secure. Its entitlement is not impacted," said Bill Swan, a water rights lawyer for the Imperial Irrigation District, which gets three-fourths of the state's Colorado River allotment.

* Lake Powell, which holds water from the upper-basin states, and Lake Mead, which receives water from Powell, will be operated as one reservoir system. That is expected to make it easier to control Lake Mead's level, and thus the shortage triggers.

* States will be allowed to hold "conserved" water in Lake Mead from year to year, changing existing requirements that make them use or lose their annual allocations.

Water agencies could then pay irrigation districts to fallow farmland, keep the unused irrigation water stored in Lake Mead and draw on it later.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will be able to store as much as 1.5 million acre-feet in Lake Mead, nearly double the capacity of its Diamond Valley Lake Reservoir in Riverside County. That is enough water to meet annual needs for about 3 million average households.

Nevada, which has the smallest water allotment in the lower basin, plans to hold water in Lake Mead from fallow farmland along the Virgin and Muddy rivers. The Southern Nevada Water Authority also will build a small reservoir, called Drop Two, near the Mexican border to capture flows ordered by American farmers who don't use the water when it rains. That measure would decrease flows to the Colorado River's ecologically important delta, potentially sparking an outcry from Mexico.

In return for financing the reservoir, Southern Nevada will get some of the captured water. The Metropolitan Water District and Arizona may also take part in the arrangement.

Las Vegas' exploding population and growing water needs have been a driving force behind the talks. Pat Mulroy, the powerful head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, had threatened to go to court to get more water.

Michael Cohen, a senior research associate at the Pacific Institute, called the agreement a massive step forward.

But he wasn't prepared to say the states that relied on the Colorado River have fully acknowledged a drier future.

"None of the municipal agencies are saying, 'We need to reevaluate our urban plans, our growth plans, because there's only so much water,' " he said. "It's not clear that the states are saying, 'OK, we're going to now live in this era of limits.' "

AG Brown continues global warming drive

California must reduce current emissions by at least 25 percent to meet goal

RYAN ORR
Daily Press [Victorville CA]

OAKLAND — Attorney General Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. challenged supervisors Tuesday from all 58 counties to combat global warming, which he compelled San Bernardino County to do in April by filing a lawsuit.

“California is committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels,” said Brown at the annual meeting of California State Association of Counties.

In April, Brown sued San Bernardino County for not properly addressing the issue of global warming in its general plan update.

To avoid lengthy and costly litigation, the county reached a global warming agreement with Brown that calls for a 30-month public process to cut greenhouse gas emissions attributable to land-use decisions and government operations.

“This lawsuit tactic
is harassment...
It’s mere grand standing..."

Using San Bernardino County as an example, other jurisdictions such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Monica and Chula Vista are initiating their own measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“I believe the attorney general’s actions in filing this lawsuit were wrong” wrote San Bernardino County 1st District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt in an op-ed in the Daily Press.

“Climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, as a matter of policy, is more appropriately addressed through international treaties, federal legislation and regulations, and state legislation and regulations,” he wrote.

Mitzelfelt is the only county supervisor to vote against the settlement.

County spokesman David Wert said they would have preferred not to be sued but the outcome was good for everyone.

Brown also recently partnered with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sue the Bush administration to allow California to set a stricter tailpipe emission standards than the federal government.

“This lawsuit tactic is harassment,” said James Taylor, managing editor of Environment and Climate News. “There are no legal basis for these suits. It’s mere grand standing and has no place in the judicial system.”

Under California law, the state is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and then reducing 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

To achieve the state’s 2020 target, California must reduce current emissions by at least 25 percent.

“This radical change in our fossil fuel economy demands imagination, massive investment and extraordinary ingenuity,” Brown said.

Brown didn’t mention how California’s increasing population may affect the emission goals.

In 2050, the goal is to have emissions reduced to 80 percent below 1990 levels. The California Department of Finance expects there to be almost 60 million living in the state, a 101 percent increase from 1990.

“What he’s asking for is all pain and no gain,” said Taylor, who called Brown’s plan nothing more than a costly symbolic statement.

He said that even if the entire nation was in line with the Kyoto Protocol calling for lower emissions, it would have no measurable effect on temperatures for 100 years.