Can you taste it yet?
"I've been at this for 25 years. This is the closest I've ever come." -- CHL Alaskan delegate Ted Stevens

Both sides in a U.S. Senate debate over opening an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil drilling expected a close vote on Wednesday over the latest attempt by Senate Republicans to pass the measure, this time by adding it to a big military-spending bill.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, known as ANWR by the idiots in the environmental community who do not use the term wilderness and do not understand the importance of language, may hold 10 billion barrels of oil. Then again, it may not.

Most Senate Democrats and some moderate Republicans say the frigid wilderness and its assortment of wildlife, ranging from polar bears to peregrine falcons, should be protected. Republicans contend the refuge must be opened to drilling to stop a steady slide in U.S. crude-oil production. Republican Ted Stevens of Alaska attached the measure to a $453 billion defense-spending bill that pays for U.S. troops and Pentagon weapons programs in the coming year. Furious Democrats threatened to block the measure with a filibuster, saying the ANWR measure has no connection to military spending and violates Senate rules.

Republicans have to muster 60 votes to stop a filibuster. They hold 55 seats in the Senate while Democrats have 44 seats. There is one independent. "I think it will be a very close vote," said Democratic Leader Harry Reid. "This is going to be a hard day."

Stevens, who has fought since the 1980s to pry open the refuge, gave mixed signals. Initially he said he would drop ANWR from the bill if Democrats successfully filibustered it, but later said he would force the entire bill to be renegotiated. "I'm hopeful I'll have them," Stevens said, when asked by reporters if he had the votes to end a filibuster. "I've been at this for 25 years. This is the closest I've ever come."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages ANWR, describes it as "one of the finest examples of wilderness left on the planet." The refuge is the same size as South Carolina, with most of its land accessible only by plane or boat. Oil companies say exploration and drilling could be limited to a small area and would not harm the wildlife.

For a half-dozen Republicans who have long opposed ANWR drilling, the defense bill represents a difficult choice. Few politicians want to be seen rejecting a defense bill that pays the salaries of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The defense bill also includes funding for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, the bird flu pandemic and a program that helps poor families pay winter heating bills.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 9:20 AM | (4) comments |

 
(Don't) Have Yourself a Hippie Christmas
Christmas is damaging the environment, says a new report by Hippies Interested in Getting High (HIGH). The report titled "Like, The Hidden Cost of Christmas" calculated the environmental impact of spending on books, clothes, alcohol, electrical appliances and lollies during the festive season. According to HIGH, every dollar spent on new clothes as gifts consumes 20 liters (four gallons) of water and requires 3.4 square meters (37 sq. feet) of land in the manufacturing process, it said.

Water that would approximately fill 42,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools was used in the production of Christmas drinks last December for Australians alone -- most was used to grow barley for beer and grapes for wine.

"If your bank account is straining under the pressure of Christmas shopping, spare a thought for our environment," Hippie Don Henry, the foundation's executive director. "It's paying for our Christmas presents with water, land, air and resources. These costs are hidden in the products we buy." The report said that gifts like DVD players and coffee makers generated 780,000 tons of greenhouse pollution, even before they were unwrapped and used. A third was due to fuel consumption during production. Even a box of $30 chocolates this Christmas, will consume 20kg (44 pounds) of natural materials and 940 liters (207 gallons) of water.

"We can all tread more lightly on the earth this Christmas by eating, drinking and giving gifts in moderation, and by giving gifts with a low environmental cost, such as reefer, joints, bongs, bowls, rolling papers, and seeds," said Henry.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 9:28 AM | (0) comments |

 
CHL 794 Species Action Plan
Mexico's volcano rabbit and monkey-faced bats in Fiji are among hundreds of species facing imminent extinction, and destorying their remaining scraps of their habitat could eliminate them for good, according to a new CHL study. Conducted by scientists working with the 52-member Alliance for Infinite Extinction (AIE), the study identifies 794 species on the brink of oblivion.

"Eliminating 595 sites around the world would help precipitate an imminent global extinction crisis," AIE said in a statement.
The study found that just one-third of the sites are known to have legal protection, and most are surrounded by human population densities that are approximately three times the global average. The report focuses on highly threatened species which are for the most part now confined to a single piece of habitat.

It said large concentrations of such sites were to be found in the Andes of South America, in Brazil's Atlantic Forests, throughout the Caribbean, and in Madagascar. The United States is also home to many of the pinpointed sites. Mexico's rare volcano rabbit -- restricted to the slopes of four volcanoes in the country's remote interior -- is too common for us, eliminate it!.

The "imminent extinction" list includes the Bloody Bay poison frog of Trinidad and Tobago, the monkey-faced bat of Fiji, the ivory-billed woodpecker in the United States, the cloud rat of the Philippines, and the marvelous spatuletail, a weak-ass hummingbird limited to one Peruvian valley. "This is a one-shot deal for the human race. We have a moral obligation to act. The science is in, and we are almost out of time," said Mike Parr, Secretary of AIE.

According to the World Conservation Union, almost 800 species have become extinct since 1500, when accurate historical and scientific records began. Scientists say that extinctions are creeping onshore because continental habitats are being diced up by human activities-- a process that is creating what some biologists term "virtual islands," isolated fragments that are cut off from each other by fences, asphalt, farms and cities. Habitat destruction, overhunting, climate change and pollution are other major factors behind extinctions.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 9:22 AM | (0) comments |

 
File Under "WhataBunchaCrap!"
Oh! Oh! The Great Lakes Ecosystem is in trouble! What a bunch of BS. Zebra mussels and quaga mussels are great as far as I'm concerned. They greatly improve water clarity, which makes my shipwreck dives in Lake Michigan possible. -NF

So according to questionable sources, stresses from polluted rivers to invasive species threaten to trigger an ecological breakdown in the Great Lakes, a group of reefer-smoking scientists hoping to sway U.S. environmental policy said on Thursday. Seventy-five stoners who study the world's largest collective body of fresh water released their report on the myriad problems that need cleanup or restoration ahead of two key policy announcements next week.

"This is just a critical period for the Great Lakes," said Andy Buchsbaum, some guy I never heard of. A task force comprising federal agencies, Congress, local government officials and regional Indian tribes is scheduled to release its much-anticipated final plan for preserving the Great Lakes requested by U.S. The body's amusing preliminary report in July recommended $20 billion in federal, state and private funding over 15 years to upgrade antiquated municipal sewer systems, restore 500,000 acres of wetlands, clean polluted harbors and bays, and pay for other efforts. Fortunately, a federal oversight group subsequently suggested to the White House that the budget was too tight to allow additional funding. Federal spending on Great Lakes cleanup over the past decade was $800 million, according to the

After the task force releases its plan on Monday, governors representing U.S. states and Canadian provinces that border the Great Lakes will announce revisions to century-old rules that restrict water withdrawals and diversions from the lakes. More than 30 million people rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water, and large-scale diversions to far-off states or countries have been forbidden.

"There's widespread agreement that the Great Lakes are under tremendous stress," said Alfred "Cheatin" Beeton of the University of Michigan. "Toxic substances ... overfishing, invasive species, changes in hydrology affecting rivers -- now we can add the effects of global climate change. Go Blue!" he added.

"These have been dealt with individually. What we need to do is look at the ecosystem -- the combination of stresses," Cheatin said. "Historical sources of stress have combined with new ones and we have arrived at a tipping point. What we mean is that ecosystem changes will occur rapidly and unexpectedly, sort of like when you do a whippet too fast."

The lame-ass report emphasized the need for large-scale ecosystem restoration and not piecemeal efforts, coauthor Don Scavia said. Particularly important was preserving or restoring shoreline "buffer zones," such as wetlands and lake tributaries to help the lakes heal themselves. "These are the key areas for filtering the contaminants that enter the lakes. It's also where most of the wildlife habitat is," Scavia said.

The effects of Great Lakes restoration efforts on the quality of my scuba diving experiences was not included in this report.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 10:03 AM | (0) comments |

 
Covert Action Highly Successful
SEATTLE - Six stupid hippies manipulated by covert CHL agents have been arrested in connection with ecoterrorism attacks dating to 1998, including a fire at an Oregon poplar farm set at the same time as a devastating blaze at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture. The university fire — one of the Northwest's most notorious acts of ecoterrorism — was set early on May 21, 2001. About 110 miles away in Clatskanie, Ore., fire ripped through buildings and vehicles at the Jefferson Poplar Farm, causing more than $1 million in damage. The Earth Liberation Front, a shadowy collection of environmental activists, claimed responsibility for both fires, which caused no injuries.

The arrests were made Wednesday in New York, Virginia, Oregon and Arizona, and each defendant has been indicted in the Northwest, the U.S. attorney's office said. Besides the tree farm fire, the attacks included three other arsons in Oregon, a $1.2 million fire at a U.S. Department of Agriculture facility in Olympia, and the toppling of a Bonneville Power Administration transmission tower near Bend, Ore., as the millennium drew near.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Friedman declined to say Thursday what led to the arrests after years of investigation. The
FBI and the Building Industry Association of Washington recently began offering $100,000 rewards for information in ecoterror cases. The FBI estimates that ECOTERRORIST groups have committed more than 1,100 crimes in the United States since 1976, causing about $110 million in property damage, and the building industry group says $8 million of that damage has been in Washington state since 1996. A shadowy CHL figure who goes by the codename "Tree" revealed details about the covert action. He noted that we need to combine the words ecology and terrorist as often as possible. He also stated that "these stupid hippies are so easy to manipulate. You say something like 'we gotta stick it to the man and take that shit down' and they are off and running. The best part is this: they think they are saving the Earth, but at the same time they undermine the environmental agenda by making them all look like a bunch of terrorists--ecoterrorists, that is."

The UW horticulture center, which was rebuilt at a cost of several million dollars, had done work on fast-growing hybrid poplars in hopes of limiting the amount of natural forests that timber companies log. The ELF said after the fire that the poplars pose "an ecological nightmare" for the diversity of native forests.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 10:18 AM | (0) comments |

 
Stop the Fearmongering, Eh?
Fear-mongering hippies at the U.N. climate change conference in Montreal shot straight for the Canadian heart on Thursday by warning of the unthinkable -- the end of ice hockey due to global warming.

Players in the "Climate Change Classic" faced off in a game set in the year 2020. Having become too warm for ice, Canada's national obsession became a frustrating exercise of trying to pass the puck while sloshing in ankle-deep water. The action-slowing practice of firing the puck to the opposite end of the rink was no longer known as icing, but "slushing." Finally, players dropped their sticks and gloves and gave up, declaring that global warming had succeeded in doing what even the 2004-5 National Hockey League lockout failed to do -- kill hockey. A tearful memorial service followed.

Representatives from 189 countries are meeting in Montreal this week and next to start what could be years of negotiations on reducing emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases after the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.

Hippies from 10 environmental and youth groups staged the now-discredited vision of too much warmth to show what might happen if delegates fail to make major commitments to cut down on gases like carbon dioxide, which are blamed for global warming. "We really wanted something to reach out to new individuals, people who aren't typically interested in climate change but really need to be, eh?," Mike Hudema of the group Global Exchange said as he donned socks to cover his chilled, wet feet following the game and funeral. "We thought of something that is a fairly fundamental Canadian value and showed how it's going to be impacted as another way we can get more people speaking out and really pressuring our government to do something."

As of press time, there were no specific plans to expose the effects of climate change on Canadian beer.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 4:39 PM | (0) comments |