Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

What will a warming world look like? Scientists are using plants that grow around Yellowstone’s carbon dioxide-spewing thermal vents to make some predictions, says the Environmental News Network:

Plants near the vents are exposed to nearly twice as much carbon dioxide as is normal. But if carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and cars keep increasing at current rates, the amount of carbon dioxide at the vents now will become the worldwide norm in 100 years.

Among the researchers’ findings: those high CO2 levels cause native plants to lose more water and produce less protein. But weeds like Dalmatian toadflax “respond positively to elevated levels of CO2″ and grow like mad.

Hmmm. Drier plants are more susceptible to wildfire, which, as we reported, will become more common as global warming progresses. Plants growing in high CO2 levels will also provide less nutrition to wildlife and livestock. And meanwhile the bane of Western lands, invasive weeds, will find conditions more and more to their liking.

So raise a New Year’s toast to any skeptics you know who are still in denial about climate change — and get to work on converting them.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Here’s a little story that says a lot about the non-evolution of human behavior:

Economic growth in China and other Asian countries has created many new customers who seek satisfaction by purchasing coats made of bobcat pelts. Worldwide demand has soared, so much that a prime bobcat pelt now sells for $345 — $320 higher than in the year 2000. As a result, in the Rocky Mountains, more people are trying to make money by trapping bobcats, and they’re killing more bobcats.

It’s classic supply and demand, classic wildlife commercialization, and classic steel-jawed human dominance over the rest of the natural world.

The Billings (Montana) Gazette has the story and plenty of graphic photos with details such as:

Bobcats from Montana and northern Wyoming produce some of the best pelts … Size, shade, color and quality drive the price of bobcat furs … A big tom with a clear belly draws top dollar …

It’s worth a click just to see the photos.

Vocabulary alert: The salesmen call it “fine fashions.”

Bill McKibben’s written a well-argued and authoritative introduction to a Sierra magazine package on supposedly “smart” energy solutions. His smartest point: Given the huge political obstacles to the broad changes in energy use and sources required to deal effectively with global warming, what the U.S. really needs is a cultural shift. Only a new sense of community, he argues, can push back effectively against energy companies and other interests that want to keep fossil fuels at the center of America’s energy plan, with disastrous environmental consequences for the planet. Or, in his words:

If climatologists are right that we need to bring the world’s carbon dioxide emissions at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 to stabilize the climate, we’re unlikely to succeed with new equipment alone. We need new attitudes and behaviors, not new lightbulbs and reactors.

I didn’t find the rest of the Sierra package all that interesting, but McKibben also mentions an “Energize America” collaborative project playing out at DailyKos.com. Put together “between September 2005 and May 2006 by hundreds of progressive citizen activists,” the project bills itself as a “Strategic & Comprehensive Grassroots Plan to Achieve U.S. Energy Security by 2020 & U.S. Energy Independence by 2040.”

How, ask ye of little faith? Well, “by: 1) reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 75%, 2) reducing oil imports by 50%, 3) generating 25% of electricity from renewable sources, and 4) creating or preserving over three million new jobs by 2020.”

The plan’s in its fifth iteration and notable because of its intent to be politically realistic. Given DailyKos.com’s central place in the left netroots universe, you know the Democratic presidential candidates and wannabes are reading this and wondering: If it was the economy in 1992, will 2008 be the year when it’s the global warming, stupid?

We can only hope that good politics and global survival line up so soon.

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

When Gale Norton resigned as Interior Secretary this spring, she said she and her husband wanted to get back to “the mountains we love in the West.” She’s back, and guess what: She’ll be helping an energy giant suck fossil fuels out of those very mountains, just like she did in Interior. She’ll be working for Royal Dutch Shell, says the Denver Post, helping them with the legal aspects of oil shale development. No word on what Gale’s compensation package will look like, but it’s likely to be more than she would have gotten working for the Sierra Club: Royal Dutch Shell had $307 billion in revenues last year.

It’s always nice to see a political appointee, who stepped down from her post while her department was under a shadow of scandal, be handsomely rewarded for her efforts in office. Isn’t it?

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

Are you stuck in the Denver airport, waiting for the blizzard to pass and need something fun to do online besides surfing freesex.com? Then check out some energy porn here at the Energy Information Administration’s state energy profiles. You can learn all kinds of groovy stuff about your state, like where major transmission lines, coal power plants and coal reserves are located.

I learned, for example, that New Mexico’s San Juan Basin is the nation’s largest field of natural gas reserves, that the state contributes 9 percent of the nation’s total natural gas and that New Mexico is the fourth poorest state in the nation with a per-capita personal income of $27,644.

With knowledge like this, I can’t help but be the hit of holiday cocktail parties!

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Wendy McCaw, one of the more controversial billionaires in California, continues to swing sharp elbows against anyone who doesn’t like how she runs one of her properties, the Santa Barbara News-Press.

I have flogged this blog to publicize the rebellion against McCaw, in September and July, when dozens of News-Press staffers quit or got fired, and many Santa Barbara readers also rose up against her.

The updated update: McCaw has fired the top union organizer at the News-Press, pressed a lawsuit against one former editor, and in a carom shot, she’s apparently pressing another lawsuit against a journalism professor who wrote a story criticizing her. And … she’s reportedly threatened to sue local store owners who put up signs criticizing her.

So, NewsBiz fans, here’s another clickfest into Wendy McCaw’s world. Begin with The Los Angeles Times, which reports on some of her latest battles, and adds:

The remaining (News-Press) employees have voted to unionize, and the paper is being sued by 200 current and past employees alleging failure to pay overtime. … (McCaw) sent a memo to employees threatening to discipline those who are disloyal or make disparaging comments about the paper or its management. … In addition, she was involved in a protracted battle with the California Coastal Commission over allowing public beach access near her Hope Ranch estate.

Concerned about the, ahem, journalism profession, Editor & Publisher hones in on McCaw’s lawsuit charging that an American Journalism Review story libeled her. That AJR story, in the December 2006-January 2007 issue, has a lively headline, “Santa Barbara Smackdown.” The libel lawsuit smacks down the writer, Chapman University journalism professor Susan Paterno, saying that she committed a “biased, false and misleading diatribe.”

(Read on …)

The Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas’s groundbreaking political site, has an interesting take on the voting patterns of Western youth, circa 2006. Essentially, the Kos-tic wunderkind of the Democratic netroots contends that young voters (i.e., those under 30) in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico and even the Republican stronghold of Idaho broke strongly for Democrats in the November election, a circumstance that augurs extremely well for the future of Western Democrats:

A generation ago, the sagebrush rebellion tore across the Rocky Mountain West, leaving the Democratic Party in the region dying and gasping for breath. As recently as six years ago, Democrats held none of the region’s governorships. Now, in a solid chain reaching from Mexico to Canada, every Rocky Mountain state has at least one senior official—a governor or senator—from the Democratic Party (the exceptions in the region being Idaho and Utah).
This ascendance has tracked almost identically with the rise of the Millennial Generation as voting age citizens. And it’s not surprising because on issue after issue, young Westerners appear to be more reliably progressive than their predecessors.

A few of Kos’s conclusions seem based more on partisan hope than on data. Still, there’s enough apparent substance and interesting analysis to take a look:

Youth vote in the Mountain West

I am the first to acknowledge that I have no idea what it means for U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Az) to have signed up Henry Kissinger as an honorary co-chairman for the senator’s 2008 presidential campaign in New York. I just know that the National Journal’s “Hotline” said it’s so, and that I’m staying away from Syria, Iran, North Korea and (just for good measure) Cambodia until 2012 or so.

Bombs away:

Kissinger, Peterson, 57 Major Donors Join Team McCain

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

Thousands of cows are receiving temporary stays of execution each day, thanks to the immigration raids on Swift & Co. meatpacking plants on Dec. 12. The Greeley Tribune reports that Swift’s Greeley plant has curtailed cow slaughter (normally happening at a rate of 2,300 per day) by half after losing some 260 workers to the raids.

Sure, we probably didn’t need all that beef anyway. But wine and peaches are another story. In Western Colorado, vineyard and orchard owners are quaking in their irrigation boots, worried that they’ll be targeted for the next raid, or that their main stock of labor — immigrants — may be scared away from working the fields next year.

It just goes to show how vital immigrants — documented and otherwise — are to our economy. According to a study by Pia Orrenius, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, immigrants boost the Gross Domestic Product by more than $14 billion per year. Meanwhile, at least 50 percent of undocumented immigrants actually have payroll taxes deducted from their wages (because they use fake Social Security numbers), and therefore fund Medicaid, Social Security and other federal programs. Yet, very few ever collect on these same programs.

As a result, concludes Francine J. Lipman of the Chapman University School of Law, “undocumented immigrants provide a fiscal windfall and may be the most fiscally beneficial of all immigrants.” Indeed, the Social Security Administration’s earnings-suspense file now includes over $421 billion in unclaimed earnings. The bulk of these funds come from employers in agriculture, restaurant and service sectors, and originate in California, Texas and Illinois, industries and states heavily populated by undocumented immigrants.

That’s a heck of a lot of money (and don’t forget the peaches and wine) that depends on immigrants. Should we really be trying to “round them up” and send them home?

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

With great fanfare, the Forest Service and Interior have just announced the LANDFIRE project, meant to help the agencies manage fire risks. According to the LANDFIRE Web site:

The objective of the LANDFIRE Project is to provide the spatial data needed to support the National Fire Plan and to accurately identify lands or communities with hazardous fuel build-up or extreme departure from historical conditions.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Inspector General in the Department of Agriculture just released an audit of the cost of firefighting. According to the Casper Star-Tribune, the audit sharply criticizes Forest Service fire managers for, among other things, spending too much money on fighting fires:

The largest factor in rising costs, the audit found, is the expense of protecting the homes and communities that have sprouted around the edges of federal forests.

So why is it that the much-vaunted, $40 million LANDFIRE project describes vegetation, fire regimes, and topography, but includes absolutely no information on the location of cities, homes or buildings?

Not to worry, says Dave Tenny, Agriculture Department deputy undersecretary for natural resources and environment, in an article in the Billings Gazette. Local officials can simply gather their own data on homes and communities, perhaps from the U.S. Geological Survey, and plug that information into LANDFIRE. But will those local leaders have the expertise and technical skill needed to turn LANDFIRE into something they can actually use to better manage the threat of fire around their communities?

“It would depend upon their skill and expertise of being able to do that,” said Henry Bastian, Interior Landfire Business Lead. “Those that are aware of the various data sets probably would be able to do that without any problems. But yeah, if you’re looking just at the small community that doesn’t have a lot of technical expertise or knowledge, yeah, it will be difficult for those users.”

We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

A “seven-step program” sounds like some kind of self-help regimen, perhaps for overcoming a tendency to date wildly inappropriate men. But a former BLM employee is using one to teach cows to eat the nastiest of Western weeds: Canadian thistle, leafy spurge, and spotted knapweed.

Livestock consultant Kathy Voth says that when teaching cattle to expand their menus, the first step is to “know your weeds.” She’s quoted in the Dec. 15 Capital Press:

“First, know your weed and what’s in it. All plants contain nutrients, which increase palatability, and toxins, which reduce it. Toxins are not automatically toxic. It’s the dose that makes the difference,” she said. “I make sure weeds I want to feed cows are nutritious. If there are supplements I can provide to help the animal deal with the toxins, I make them available.”

She starts with a pen full of young cows, which, unlike young humans, are willing to try new foods. For the first few feedings, she adds a squirt of molasses to make the weeds more palatable. Then it’s cold turkey with no condiments. When returned to the pasture five days later, the trained cows teach the rest of the herd to eat weeds.

Voth is now working with a California county and a Montana ranch to use these four-legged weed eaters. Wonder if they’ll still qualify as “grass-fed beef.”

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

“Each depth had its own color. If the sun was just right, it was really pretty.” That’s how Steve Pehrson described the ponds he and his friends swam in as kids, as told to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. He and other Monticello, Utah, kids commonly cooled off in the tailings ponds at the uranium mill that sat on the edge of town. The kids also dug into the tailings piles, and the tailings were used in gardens and even sandboxes. Now, people in Monticello are looking into the link between these habits and cases of leukemia and other diseases that have cropped up amongst the citizenry.

It will be an interesting case to watch. Monticello is far from the only town in the West where people were exposed to the toxic remains of uranium mining. If the Monticello folks can prove a link between the sicknesses and the mill, it may inspire people in other towns — from Durango to Grand Junction to Naturita to Grants — to take a closer look at how their health may now be suffering from their historic link to uranium.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

In northwestern Wyoming, four mountain lions have died of plague in the past year, and several domestic cats have tested positive for the disease. Scientists think that plague is cycling through the region’s flea, rodent and cat populations.

Just one more reason not to let your house cat roam outdoors. We already know that the nation’s 90 million domestic cats kill millions of birds and small rodents each year. Now they could be bringing home something much worse than a decapitated vole.

Here kitty, kitty.