Global Warming's First Victims

Are the animals of course. Here, grizzly expert Doug Peacock makes the case for the Yellowstone grizzlies, whose food source, the whitebark pine has succumbed to beetle kill in a vast way, due to warm winters for just seven years. It's a typical house of cards, with one piece falling and others in a textbook domino event.

I had lunch with Doug and his wife Andrea last October in Livingston, a month before I was run out of town by the Evil Editor. Peacock was a good friend of Ed Abbey and the prototype for Abbey's protagonist, George Washington Hayduke in The Monkey Wrench Gang. For me it was meeting a legend, an introduction arranged thanks to ousted Park County Commissioner and chair, Dr. Larry Lahren, the man who also introduced me to Tom McGuane in Missoula at the Montana Book Festival, as "The man who ruined my political career,'Bless him!'" It's a tribute to my journalistic skills and Lahren's great character, that he didn't consider me an enemy. I'll always remember what he did for me.

The bears need to be protected again under the ESA. There aren't that many of them left and the curious matter of most native Montanans being afraid of the bears and wolves and bison be damned. The sad fact is outside of the liberal enclave of Hollywood insiders clustered at Deep Creek in the spectacular Paradise Valley south of Livingston, where the Peacocks live, most regular rancher folks hate wildlife, especially if they can't kill it, eat it, or sell it to tourists. It's a real problem in rural America. Saving wildlife isn't a priority with heartland types.

A Governor Scorned

As Josh Marshall reports, not the sort of temperment desired in a quasi-chief executive.

So let's put this all together. We rely on elected officials not to use the power of their office to pursue personal agendas or vendettas. It's called an abuse of power. There is ample evidence that Palin used her power as governor to get her ex-brother-in-law fired. When his boss refused to fire him, she fired his boss. She first denied Monegan's claims of pressure to fire Wooten and then had to amend her story when evidence proved otherwise. The available evidence now suggests that she 1) tried to have an ex-relative fired from his job for personal reasons, something that was clearly inappropriate, and perhaps illegal, though possibly understandable in human terms, 2) fired a state official for not himself acting inappropriately by firing the relative, 3) lied to the public about what happened and 4) continues to lie about what happened.

These are, to put it mildly, not the traits or temperament you want in someone who could hold the executive power of the federal government.

Polar Bears Gain Threatened Listing

As much as it pained Secretary Kempthorne to say it, he did. Sure there were some pathetic caveats, but the basis is there legally, now. I applaud it.

Sea Ice decline

Bush Science

Do not discuss, biologists are told. Straight from my novel and it's not fiction.

Gone in 60 Seconds

"it is just silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria." Nunavut biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor on Tim Flannery. I've searched his fine book and while Flannery paints dismal picture, nowhere does he give it a short timeframe like this quote claims. I've found this technique used extensively by critics. It's the last gasp, but neither Flannery or Al Gore say this 25 year canard. They say if CO2 is not curbed within the next ten years and the trend continues the lack of ice habitat will surely be the animal's demise. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does too. The latest studies have shown the ice would be gone by 2040. That would be more than 25 years.