BUSH ADMINISTRATION PUTS A HUSH ON SCIENCE, USA TODAY PUTS A TWIST ON TRUTH

This past week I heard from a conservative friend of mine who sent me one of those gotcha articles about a liberal issue. The article from USA Today was called "Do trees share the blame for global warming?" It seemed to credit trees and plants for the warming trend we've heretofore blamed on ourselves.

When I was in high school science, I learned that the carbon in the air creates the greenhouse effect and since trees need the gas for photosynthesis, they're our best defense against global warming. It is also true that methane causes global warming which has led conservatives to the Cow Fart Theory that farms create greenhouse conditions. The USA Today article, which cites the journal Nature, reveals that, according to a recent study, a lot of our methane comes from plants and trees. 10-30% of it. Ouch.

So I checked into it. I found the German scientist, Dr. Frank Keppler online and discovered that he is indeed a respected scientist but he in no way endorses the theory that increased global warming is caused by trees. About a week after Keppler's dramatic finding, he and his organization, the Max Planck Institute put out a press release called,"Global Warming - The blame is not with the plants." In it he wrote:

"The most frequent misinterpretation we find in the media is that  emissions of methane from plants are responsible for global warming.  As those emissions from plants are a natural source, they have existed long before man’s influence started to impact upon the composition of  the atmosphere. . . The fundamental problem still remaining is the global large-scale anthropogenic burning of fossil fuels."

For those of you, like me, who didn't continue with science past high school, dictionary.com defines anthropogenic as, "caused by humans".

I guess that does it for that. This headline was an example of a conservative publication twisting a scientific finding to suit a political ideology. If it's cow farts, volcanoes, and plants to blame, then who are we to disrupt the natural order? Might as well speed it up! But this is just a salvo in a radical right (dare I say it?) war on science.

Today the New York Times Online reports that a climate scientist at NASA says he's being censored by the Bush administration. Dr. James Hansen began receiving phone calls warning of "dire consequences" after he gave a speech in December about the dangers of global warming.

The main source of the threats seemed to be George Deutsch, a White House appointed public affairs guy for NASA. According to another public affairs officer, Deutsch said his job is "to make the president look good." The public affairs people, who are responsible for okaying scientists' interviews with the media, told Hansen he needed to submit his lectures and essays for their review.

Dr. Hansen has been with NASA since 1967 and does not plan to shut up or back down from his positions. In the video companion to the article, he said, "in my 30 some years of experience in government I've never seen control to the degree that it's occurring now and I think that it's just very harmful to the way that a democracy works. We have to inform the public..."

Let's hope more scientists step forward and make their voices heard about global warming. If we don't take proactive measures now, we'll find ourselves in a world that, as Dr. Hansen said in the offending speech, is "a different planet."


The NY Times article and video:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5089&en=28e236db0967ee7f&ex=1296190800&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

USA Today: "Do trees share the blame for global warming?"
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-01-18-trees-methane_x.htm

Max Planck Institute: "Global Warming - The blame is not with the plants."
http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressReleases/2006/pressRelease200601131/

Anthropogenic: some useful vocab
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=anthropogenic

ROSENDAHL WINS SOME, LOSES ONE

Rookie City Councilman Bill Rosendahl has found some friends on the council, but last week showed he still has to take his lumps. Rosendahl pulled in 59% of the vote in May chiefly by opposing two of the biggest development plans to hit the Westside. . . ever. LAX expansion and Phase 2 of the Playa Vista development would change life on the Westside enormously.

Yesterday Rosendahl announced that the victory over airport expansion is final. The community groups that opposed it agreed to drop their lawsuits and settle for a more sensible solution. LAX passengers will be capped at 75 million a year, the community will be more involved in modernization plans, and new air traffic will have to be redirected to the city's other airports in Ontario and Palmdale.

New Council President Eric Garcetti, a late endorser of Rosendahl, and Valley councilmember Wendy Greuel have landed alongside him on some key votes. The three introduced a resolution to study Clean Money for the city that garnered a unanimous vote. The Clean Money system has gone a long way toward getting money out of politics in Arizona and Maine.

Garcetti handed the freshman some nice appointments, making him chair of the Public Works Committee and vice chair of the Commerce Committee which oversees LAX.

And Garcetti stood by his pal when Playa Vista came up for a vote last week. In Bill's first blow, his motion to mandate a Supplemental Environmental Impact Report from Playa Capital Inc. was defeated 7-3. At issue is the methane seepage beneath the behemoth and the dewatering system that may or may not keep water out of the pipes that keep the methane at safe levels.

Rosendahl's press release added, "dewatering can result in groundwater contamination, threatening the Ballona Wetlands. It can also cause subsidence and soil erosion, jeopardizing the structural integrity of some buildings." Requiring the report also would give more opportunity for public input.

“When there are questions of public safety, we should always err on the side of more, not less study,” Rosendahl said. “When there is a question of process, we should always insist on more, not less public participation.”

It may have been too much to hope for; Playa Vista has been chugging along for a while now and the political pressure is new, even if the public opposition is not. If he won every battle, Rosendahl wouldn't be reaching far enough. Both expansion plans seemed like done deals before he and Antonio Villaraigosa were elected, but public opinion has seen a major shift. The people of the 11th District were determined last year to slow the growth of development.

And the battle against Phase 2 is far from over. Look for more resistance to development on the Westside as traffic chokes the quality of life. Until some major public transit improvements emerge, community groups will push back against growth.

Here's to lots more Rosendahl victories and even maybe a couple tough defeats.

My last post on LAX expansion:
http://hollywood-liberal.blogspot.com/2005/12/people-and-pols-stop-lax-expansion-los.html

Mayor Sam's thread on committee appointments:
http://mayorsam.blogspot.com/2006/01/anything-catch-your-eye-here.html

Mr. Rosendahl's press release on Playa Vista:
http://www.lacity.org/council/cd11/press/cd11press12834909_01112006.pdf

Daily Breeze from Jan. 12:
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/articles/2187972.html

The LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-playa12jan12,0,6645558.story?coll=la-headlines-california

LAX Master Plan:
http://www.laxmasterplan.org/

The Clean Money Campaign:
http://www.caclean.org

WHAT'S THE RUSH, BUSH? THE QUICK ROAD LEADS TO FAILURE

Senator John McCain this morning acknowledged the tragedy that occurred in last week's US attack inside Pakistan. He said that he regrets the families killed and mud huts destroyed, but he said nothing of the fact that we basically attacked our most valuable ally in the war on terror.

"We have to do what we think is necessary to take out Al-Quaeda, particularly the top operatives," McCain said on CBS' Face the Nation. But he said it in an apologetic way.

This is the second US attack in Pakistan near the Afghan border in a week. This one, more garish than the last, targeted Ayman Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian Al-Quaeda operative who is reputed to be Osama Bin Laden's second in command. The rationalization goes that taking him out makes it worthwhile to break the delicate agreement with Pakistan not to kill their people.

The only problem is that, stunningly, our intelligence was wrong.

Zawahiri, apparently, had left the building. There was no time to ask for cooperation from Pervez Musharraf, or even the Pakistani tribes in the village. So innocent people died. The earlier attack was explained away by denying that US forces ever crossed the border. This attack will be harder to explain and it is but one example in the war on terror where the US took the quick way out with disastrous results.

Senator McCain, a torture victim himself, needled the Bush administration until the president agreed to sign a version of the his torture bill. Of Mr. Bush's qualified agreement, McCain told Bob Schieffer this morning that he was "not particularly satisfied." Sadly, the debate on torture has degenerated into the question of whether it works or not rather than whether it's morally right or wrong.

We can safely say that in some cases, the information gained from detainees is correct and other times it is not. In order to get that true or false information, we can use conventional interrogation techniques or we break the law and get it quicker.

Ibn al-Sheikh Al-Libi was renditioned to Egypt where US interrogation laws are not observed. He ostensibly was coerced under threat of torture to tell a story that he later recanted. It was his story, along with those of a prisoner in Germany known as Curveball, a known "fabricator", that formed the basis of Colin Powell's tragically flawed case that Iraq had biological weapons.

In the case of Libi, torture, the shortcut to intelligence, led us down the wrong path. President Bush could have taken a lesson and gone about intelligence gathering the lawful way.

But he has not. The Senate will soon begin hearings on Mr. Bush's wiretapping of US citizens within our borders. There is a legal way to conduct such surveillance, a special court, set up just for such a purpose, that can issue an order within hours. Not quick enough for President Bush. He has decided to bypass the check and balance that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) affords and move ahead without the FISA court's blessing. He has not cited a single case where America has benefitted from intelligence gained this way.

The price we pay for these hasty actions is different in each case. In attacking within Pakistan, we kill innocents and further strain the relationship with an unlikely ally, especially when we deny it. When we torture prisoners of war, we get false or exaggerated testimony and we risk prosecution in international courts. When we spy on our own citizens, we erode our own sense of security and undermine our constitutional system of checks and balances. In each case, we lose credibility, not only abroad, but at home.

These are just examples. Not sending enough troops led to looting after the fall of Baghdad. Breaking up the Iraqi army was a quick fix that led to further chaos. It may be that all this is a result of the commander in chief's inexperience in war and his emphasis on loyalty when choosing his advisers. Perhaps it is Mr. Bush's privileged upbringing that leads him to believe that everything is gained easily.

Whatever the case, the quick way out leads nowhere. That's why this war on terror has no end in sight. Let's hope that Mr. Bush doesn't respond to the escalating nuclear situation in Iran the way he did to a very similar looking state of affairs in Iraq.

Face the Nation:
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/ftn/main3460.shtml

LA Times on the latest US attack in Pakistan:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakistan15jan15,0,7462215.story?coll=la-home-headlines&track=morenews

NY Times; Al-Libi recants:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/080104D.shtml

Newsweek on torture:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/micro_stories.pl?ACCT=617800&TICK=NEWS&STORY=/www/story/11-13-2005/0004214468&EDATE=Nov+13,+2005