• The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation has a nice summary of Obama versus McCain on nuclear weapons issues.  It's entitled "Seven Areas of Agreement, and Six of Disagreement, on Nuclear Weapons".  Check it out, as well as their related, detailed analyses:

  Project on Strengthening Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

  In a Nutshell: McCain vs. Obama on National Security

  Obama vs. McCain: A Side-By-Side Comparison on Arms Control

  Memorandum to McCain and Obama: A New Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Agenda

  McCain's Big Non-Proliferation Speech: Cheers, Jeers, and Questions

  -- Plutonium Page

• Worried about the effect of cellphones on polling results? Don't be so worried... Pew via Mark Blumenthal note the effect is modest at best.

  Obama holds a 48% to 40% lead in the sample that includes cell phones, and a 46% to 41% advantage in the landline sample.

  The modest difference disappears with likely voters. While this doesn't settle the question, the current data suggests cell phones don't 'change everything'. - DemFromCT

• A new assessment,The Measure of America: American Human Development Report 2008-2009, has been released by Columbia University Press and the Social Science Research Council. The report includes the debut of the American Human Development Index, which looks at how well Americans are doing in such arenas as life expectancy, educational attainment, living standards, income, et cetera. All the data are broken down by state and congressional district, as well as by gender, race, and ethnicity. Among the findings: 15% of American children - 10.7 million of them - live in families with monthly incomes of less than $1,500; new mothers are granted 14 or more weeks of paid leave in 98 countries, but the U.S. has no such federally mandated paid leave; African American and Latino children are four years behind their white peers in reading and math by the 12th grade. - Meteor Blades
• In my little corner of the world, garbage collection is going green. - BarbinMD
• Barack Obama will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel next week during his trip to Europe and the Middle East. No word if he plans to grope her. - BarbinMD

Listening to a John McCain speech is like finding an old Cold War era globe or map.  From yesterday:

For the second time in two days, John McCain has referred to current events in "Czechoslovakia" – a country that officially ceased to exist in January of 1993.

"And I regret some of the recent behavior Russia that has exhibited, and I’ll be glad to talk about that later on including reduction in oil supplies to Czechoslovakia after they agreed with us on a missile defense system, etcetera," said the presumptive Republican nominee at a New Mexico town hall Tuesday.

Here's a history lesson for John McCain. On the left is a map of the military alliances in Cold War Europe; on the right is modern Europe.  Click to enlarge.

Also, click here for a fancy animated lesson on Europe's changing borders.  There's more information on the Czech Republic here.

What's next?  Will McCain start worrying about the extensive Soviet presence in Afghanistan?  Will he roll back the years and rant about "that Soviet guy who bangs his shoe on stuff"?  Or, as diarist Orange County Liberal suggested, will McCain express worries about the Austro-Hungarian Empire's influence in the Balkans?

Here's video of McCain's speech.  Add your speculation:  what will he say next?

Late July, 1991:

It was one of those hellishly hot days here in Albuquerque, where you either stayed inside with the air conditioner running, or found a swimming pool someplace, or just sat in front of a fan and tried to stay cool. I was working as a student intern out on Kirtland Air Force Base, in a chemistry lab, where I did radiochemistry work with americium-241 and plutonium-238. That was one of the days when my mom picked me up.

We were driving along a long, winding road leading out of the base. Suddenly the stream of cars slowed down, and stopped. Straight ahead, we saw several military vehicles blocking the road.  Standing in the vehicles were "military guys with very big guns" (as my my mom described it later).

We'd seen the signs all summer: WARNING: CONVOYS. That day, we found out what the signs meant. Far head, we spotted several huge transport vehicles with missiles on them.  The trucks were flanked by security vehicles, with more heavily armed soldiers making it very obvious that this was serious shit. I suddenly remembered what one of my friends at the labs had told me: "You'll see convoys of missiles. Those are nuclear weapons. They're moving them so they can be dismantled. Don't have to worry about the Russians anymore, you know."

It was utterly surreal. That was when I realized what was behind the huge "doors" in the Manzano Mountains. It had always been something lurking at the back of all of our minds during the Reagan years: nukes.  Soviet nukes pointed our way, ready to launch. Reagan with his finger on the button. As a pre-teen in the early 1980s, I'd tell my mom about my nuclear attack nightmares;  she'd tell me about "duck and cover" when she lived at White Sands Missile Range in the late 1950s.

Strange, then, that my undergraduate studies in chemistry lead me to work with transuranics... stranger, still, that I eventually wound up working at the Hanford Nuclear Site, on yet another student internship. My project involved analysis of the waste that had resulted from nuclear bomb production during the Cold War.

The Hanford Nuclear Site. (Click to enlarge.)

Hanford's B Reactor (more). (Click to enlarge.)

The Hanford Site is in southeastern Washington State (see the map at the right).  It played a critical role in the Manhattan Project, for that was where plutonium for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was produced.

As we all know, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a catastrophic and deadly announcement to the world of the birth of a new weapon - a "Sword of Armageddon" that heralded one of the most frightening periods in history: the Cold War.

Hanford became a very busy place. A "war" was on.  The US had a nuclear arms race to run... and run we did. At the peak of nuclear weapons production, approximately 70 bombs were coming off the assembly line a day. In 1967, we had a staggering 70,000 nuclear warheads poised for use. The number declined over the years; by the time the Cold War had ended, our stockpile had been reduced to about 21,500 warheads.

Not good:

The FBI J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington, D.C.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is part of the U.S. intelligence community, has the lead responsibility for domestic surveillance of foreign intelligence and suspected terrorist targets.

So it seems like a rather crippling defect that the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, cannot satisfy government standards for storage and use of classified intelligence records.

"The Hoover Building does not meet the Interagency Security Committee’s criteria for a secure Federal facility capable of handling intelligence and other sensitive information," the Senate Appropriations Committee observed in a new report on the 2009 Commerce, Justice and State Appropriations bill.

More specifically:

The Committee is concerned that the limitations of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, which has not had any major structural improvements since it was opened in 1974, could affect the FBI's ability to fulfill its mission. The building is inadequate for the current FBI Headquarters workforce, causing dispersal of FBI staff in to over 16 annex offices. The building also lacks adequate setback and other security features, which puts FBI operations and personnel at unacceptable risk. The Hoover Building does not meet the Interagency Security Committee's criteria for a secure Federal facility capable of handling intelligence and other sensitive information. The Committee finds these conditions unacceptable and directs the Government Accountability Office [GAO] to review the Hoover Building and associated off-site locations, and provide a analysis of the FBI's ability to fulfill its mission and security requirements under the present circumstances. The GAO study should also assess the benefits of a consolidated Headquarters facility.

As Aftergood notes, the FBI is constructing a new Central Records Complex.  The FBI says:

The FBI has a comprehensive program to enhance its record keeping processes, including the development of the new Central Records Complex (CRC) in Winchester, Virginia. These initiatives will significantly improve search and record-retrieval capabilities by increasing search accuracy; by decreasing search time; and by reducing lost files, missing serials, and the manual movement of files. When complete, the overall impact will be to reduce even further the FBI's Freedom of Information/Privacy Act numbers and processing times. The FBI is in the process of moving to interim facilities in Winchester and is building and training a new work force in expectation of moving into the CRC in 2010.

Two years is a long time to wait.

Coal combustion waste at Navajo Mine, New Mexico. Photo credit: Bruce Gordon (EcoFlight), ©2007. Click to enlarge.

And, like many southwestern states, NM has its share of coal mines, particularly in the northwestern ("Four Corners") region.  The photo to the left is the Navajo Mine. The grey "mountains" are 50 million tons of toxic coal combustion waste (CCW) from two nearby coal-fired power plants, which have helped put San Juan County at number 6 on a recent "top 20 worst counties for carbon dioxide emissions" list.

Worse yet, there are plans to build yet another coal-fired
power plant.  And, of course, the "clean coal" gang has stepped in to reassure everyone that the new plant will "be the cleanest coal plant in the United States".

From its inception, the Desert Rock Power Plant proposal has been fraught with controversy.   The San Juan Citizens Alliance provides a useful summary of the battle between the plant's backers (Sithe Global Power and Dine Power Authority), the EPA, and local citizens.  Sithe and DPA claim that the EPA is delaying its air permit unnecessarily, while at the same time air quality continues to deteriorate from the two plants already operating in the area.

New Mexico's governor, Bill Richardson, even issued a statement saying that the EPA should delay issuing the permit, to which the spokesman for Sithe replied:

... that Desert Rock ``will be the cleanest coal plant in the United States with the most strict air permit ever.''

And how would this be accomplished?  The regional ACCCE spokesperson moseyed his way into Durango, Colorado last week to talk about it:

Brad S. Jones, regional communications director for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, said wind and other renewable sources should play a part in meeting Americans' electricity needs. But coal is needed to provide reliable power.

[...]

Environmental groups have raised concerns about the plant's emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas that has been linked to global warming. Desert Rock would emit an estimated 12.7 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. A car would have to burn 1.3 billion gallons of gas to reach the same level of emissions.

Jones said the coal industry is working to tackle carbon-dioxide emissions - with the help of technology.

"The technology is there," Jones said. "What's missing is incentives and funding to make it commercially viable."

Companies are experimenting with injecting carbon dioxide into saline aquifers and underground coal seams, Jones said.

Shorter translation:  burn coal.  We'll give you an excuse.

The Durango Herald followed up a few days later with an article about that excuse:

This month researchers will begin pumping carbon dioxide deep into the ground in a test that could yield a valuable new method for keeping the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere while also increasing methane production.

The Pump Canyon test pilot, located near Navajo Dam in New Mexico, is part of nationwide, public-private push to advance a technology known as carbon sequestration, which aims to lock the gas away where it can't contribute to global warming...

If the results from the test are positive, the San Juan Basin, which stretches into Southwest Colorado, could be among the first places in the world where the process is put into widespread use.

The article goes on to discuss carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), including its role in the Desert Rock saga:

Frank Maisano, spokesman for the Desert Rock project, said the technology could eventually be integrated into the proposed plant.

"They're building the project so that it can be retrofitted for carbon-sequestration technologies should they become affordable and available," he said.

Academics and DOE experts don't expect that to happen for another 10 years or more.

"Right now, it does look rather far off," Maisano said.

Obviously, Maisano and Sithe aren't concerned about the carbon emissions from the new plant;  as for their claim that it will be the "cleanest coal plant in the United States", apparently they're forgetting about all of the mercury, selenium, and other pollutants it would be pumping out.

Finally, Sithe has said very little about CCW:

"We believe it will be put to beneficial use," says Tom Johns, a vice president with Sithe Global, the company developing Desert Rock. Indeed, some of the flyash could end up serving as a substitute for cement or as road grade. But markets for such products aren’t that abundant, and currently less than 40 percent of the nation’s CCWs are recycled.

Meanwhile, every pound of pollutants taken out of the air to make this plant "clean" must go somewhere. "Basically, the words ’clean coal technology’ are an oxymoron," says Stant [of the Clean Air Task Force Power Plant Waste Program]. "There’s no such thing as that. Matter doesn’t disappear."

Instead, that matter - along with the mercury and the other unpleasant leftovers - ends up buried or piled up out in the desert.

Which brings us back to the Navajo Mine, because that's where the CCW from the Desert Rock Power Plant will most likely end up.

Regardless of how complex some aspects of the Desert Rock issue might be, the underlying issue is simple:  it's dirty, dirty coal power, and those who are telling the people of New Mexico or southern Colorado otherwise are fooling only themselves.

Note:  I originally posted this at Coal Is Dirty.com last week.  New Mexico has four separate races this year (three Congressional districts and a Senate race), and was very "purple" in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections;  I figured a little background on a huge environmental issue (and the energy scene) here in this amazing state might be of interest to a few folks here at Daily Kos.

Love on the rocks?

Exxon Mobil Corp. has cut funding to groups raising questions about climate change from human-generated carbon dioxide, a move taken on the eve of its annual meeting in the face of criticism that the oil giant isn't as green as some of its rivals.

Spokesman Gantt Walton confirmed Tuesday that in 2008, Exxon Mobil (XOM) scrapped funding for the Capital Research Center, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute and the Institute for Energy Research.

"We discontinued contributions to several public-policy research groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion about how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner," Walton said.

On the surface, this looks somewhat promising, especially considering that Exxon cut funding to the notorious climate change skeptics at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) last year.

But a healthy dose of skepticism on our side is important. Let's dig below that glossy corporate surface and follow the money.

Last year, Greenpeace pointed out that although Exxon stopped its handouts to the CEI, it was still up to no good:

ExxonSecrets has obtained the company's Exxon Foundation 2005 report to the IRS. Exxon told the IRS that that it funded 14 groups specifically for their climate change work. But somehow the company didn’t mention this in public.

[Emphasis added.]

In addition to those 14 groups, Exxon was also still giving millions to other front groups that faithfully pump out global warming denier propaganda (pdf , pp. 10-15).

Finally, let's take a look at the groups most recently defunded, namely their key individuals and goals:

1. The Capital Research Center aggressively monitors progressive advocacy groups (example here). One of their most recent publications regarding climate change is by the rather prolific denier Chris Horner, whose contributions to the National Review's "Planet Gore" blog speak for themselves. Horner is also listed by the Heartland Institute as one of their "global warming experts", and has recently given talks for the conservative (Exxon-funded ) Heritage Foundation.
2. The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow has an impressive list of high-profile global warming deniers on its Board of Advisors. Many, if not most of them, are also advisors to, or on the staff of, front groups that Exxon continues to fund (e.g. the American Enterprise Institute, the National Center for Policy Analysis, etc.)
3. The Frontiers of Freedom Institute includes the Center for Science and Public Policy, whose extensive anti-climate science activities include a recent letter to President Bush co-signed by a long list of fellow climate change deniers from other front groups.
4. The George C. Marshall Institute is noteworthy in that it has hosted many "roundtables" specifically for climate change deniers from other front groups (e.g. "Shattered Consensus", a discussion including Patrick Michaels, Ross McKitrick, David Legates, and Oliver Frauenfeld).
5. The Institute for Energy Research 's chairman is also a sort of clearinghouse for climate change deniers from other Exxon-funded front groups. As of the time of this post, the IER's list of Scholars includes experts from the American Enterprise Institute , the Cato Institute , and the Pacific Research Institute .

The point is this:

Although Exxon is no longer funding a handful of its climate change denier front groups, the key people in these groups are part of the entire Exxon front group network. It doesn't matter that one of their think tanks is losing funding, because they have their fingers in other oily pies, and can get their message out no matter what.

Exxon is obviously under pressure to catch up with reality; they no longer strictly deny climate change, but their tepid, equivocating language on their website leaves a lot to be desired.

As Cindy Baxter says in her post at Exxon Secrets, "it's a start ". She, like all of us in the real world would love to see Exxon stop funding all of its front groups, and not create more to take their place.

Perhaps the tiger will be out of the (think) tank for good someday.

(Also posted at DeSmogBlog.com.)

... if I take a spell I want to blow my lid, I can [unintelligible] a bunch of sorry-ass government motherf**kers down the drain. I want something that can do a bunch at a time with minimum of ease...

You get me one of those [improvised nuclear devices] and help me get it back to my country... anything to get my hands on one ...

That's from the transcript of a conversation between an undercover FBI agent and white supremacist Demetrius "Van" Crocker.  From the October 26, 2004 Global Security Newswire:

Federal authorities said Demetrius "Van" Crocker, 39, was arrested yesterday after meeting with an undercover federal agent in an attempt to purchase sarin nerve agent and conventional explosives.

[snip]

Yesterday’s operation followed a seven-month investigation that began when the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation was told that Crocker was attempting to acquire "nuclear waste and/or nuclear materials," according to the affidavit.

The story got almost no press coverage outside of Tennessee even though Crocker's goals weren't all that different from al Qaeda, which "...continues to pursue its strategic objective of obtaining a nuclear weapon [and nuclear materials]." (9/11 commission statement, pdf).

Of course, as soon we hear "al Qaeda", most of us think "that terrorist network 'over there', nothing to worry about here at home.  That loose nuke stuff is 'over there'.  No risks here."

Wrong.

From an article (pdf) in the November/December 2006 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

...[A] team of terrorists infiltrated Los Alamos National Laboratory’s sensitive Technical Area-18 (TA-18), shot their way past guards, and entered Kiva-3, one of three on-site assembly buildings where nuclear fission experiments are conducted. Once inside, the terrorists found what they had come for: two large plates of highly enriched uranium (HEU).

They unbolted the heavy plates, placed one on the floor, and held the other 6 feet above it. Months of planning came to fruition as they dropped the plate, initiating a chain reaction. In the blink of an eye, a nuclear "flash" nearly the size of the Hiroshima blast lit up the black desert sky for miles around.

[...]

[The DoE report] detailed the results of a force-on-force security test at Los Alamos in New Mexico, in which faux attackers used conventional means to devastate TA-18’s underprepared security force.

Fortunately, the DoE acted appropriately, and moved the HEU and weapons-grade plutonium out of TA-18 (hopefully to a more secure location).

But that's not all.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has been keeping track of security problems at multiple US government facilities that supposedly safeguard weapons-grade nuclear materials and components.  The examples are far too numerous to list; they range from the stunning ease at which potential terrorists could access weapons-grade HEU at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to massive security holes at Lawrence Livermore Labs, only 48 miles from San Francisco, where literally thousands of pounds of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium are stored:

Now, TIME Magazine is reporting that in late April 2008, government mock terrorists tested Livermore Lab's security, and were able to defeat the protective force and gain access to their target-simulated [weapons-grade nuclear material]. After speaking with our sources on the ground at Livermore Lab, as well as at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), POGO has heard some of what happened. We are not that surprised by what we learned.

One reason the Lab's protective guard force was not able to defend the bomb-making material is because the hydraulic lift on the vehicles used to deploy the Lab's Dillon Aero M134D guns, popularly known as the Gatling gun, did not work.

[...]

Another reason that the Lab's security was penetrated is that members of the Lab's SWAT team, known as a Special Response Team (SRT), have not trained together as a "team" for years. This goes against law enforcement best practices--guards need opportunities to see how their teammates actually communicate and respond during an emergency.

Fortunately, the DoE has taken almost all of the audits seriously, although it's obviously a case of closing the barn door after a more organized version of a Demetrius Crocker and his white supremacist friends have grabbed their target material and escaped with it.

Obviously, nuclear terrorism is a very real national security concern, and it should be high on the next president's list of possible domestic threats, and our safety depends on who wins.

If John McCain is in the Oval Office, he is just as likely to drop the ball as Bush is when it comes to potential terrorist attacks.

What a coincidence.

Just as the Alaska State Legislature allocates $2 million for a conference promoting climate change deniers' "expert" analysis of why polar bears aren't really endangered, a poster boy for polar bear junk science emerges from the woodwork.

Enter J. Scott Armstrong, who is a marketing professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. His research emphasizes forecasting methods, which he has used as the cornerstone for - you guessed it - claims  that the IPCC climate change projections are actually all wrong.

Now he's extended his "forecasts" to say that polar bears are doing just fine. He alluded to his research when Sen. James Inhofe called him  as an "expert" to testify before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee regarding the proposed endangered status of the polar bear; now, Armstrong has released an official statement advertising his paper.

Here's the link  (warning, slow website):

Research done by the U.S. Department of the Interior to determine if global warming threatens the polar bear population is so flawed that it cannot be used to justify listing the polar bear as an endangered species, according to a study being published later this year in Interfaces, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).

[...]

Professor J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School says, "To list a species that is currently in good health as an endangered species requires valid forecasts that its population would decline to levels that threaten its viability. In fact, the polar bear populations have been increasing rapidly in recent decades due to hunting restrictions. Assuming these restrictions remain, the most appropriate forecast is to assume that the upward trend would continue for a few years, then level off.

[...]

Prof. Armstrong and colleagues originally undertook their audit at the request of the State of Alaska. The subsequent study, "Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public Policy Forecasting Audit," is by Prof. Armstrong, Kesten G. Green of Monash University in Australia, and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It is scheduled to appear in the September/October issue of the INFORMS journal Interfaces.

Armstrong's claims regarding the increasing polar bear population have been debunked again  and again  (which doesn't stop Inhofe and others  from repeating the claims, of course).

Also, those who are familiar with climate change deniers will recognize Willie Soon's name.  He's one of the true believers that solar activity causes global warming, which has also been repeatedly debunked (quite conclusively, in fact).

Click here  (pdf) to read the paper.

My forecast is that it will be quoted over and over again throughout the deniersphere.  

As the saying goes, "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with..," well, you know the saying.

Whether you're a conservationist or a climate change denier, undoubtedly you've been following the ongoing efforts to officially declare Ursus maritimus (also known as the polar bear) listed as an endangered species, under the US Endangered Species Act.  

In 2005, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned for the polar bear's protection, based on research done by climate and wildlife experts worldwide (pdf).  Indeed, there is international scientific agreement that the polar bear is heading toward extinction unless it is protected (details here).  At last, in 2006, the US Fish and Wildlife Service responded to the Center's petition, and proposed  that the polar bear be listed as endangered.

Predictably, those interested more in the welfare of the fossil fuel industry than in the survival of the polar bears have been doing their best  to prevent the bears from being protected.  

To make a long story short, there was an initial Senate hearing  in which Senator James Inhofe and a carefully chosen "expert" did their best to confuse the issue;  there was a follow-up hearing  investigating the Bush administration's foot-dragging (to which a senior officialdidn't even bother to show up ).  Finally, a federal judge put her foot down  and ordered the Department of the Interior to make a final decision by May 15, 2008.

The Alaska State Legislature has decided to go "scientist" shopping:

A $2 million program funded with little debate by the Legislature last month calls for using state money to fund an "academic based" conference that highlights contrarian scientific research on global warming. Legislators hope to undermine the public perception of a widespread consensus among polar bear researchers that warming global temperatures and melting Arctic ice threaten the polar bears' survival.

 Republican legislative leaders say a federal decision to declare the polar bears "threatened" by climate change would have troubling effects on Arctic oil development and the state's economic future.

 [...]

 Legislative leaders said they are frustrated that researchers skeptical of the doomsday scenario get marginalized as crackpots or industry shills by the media and scientific agencies.  "We want to have the money to hire scientists to answer the Interior (Department) scientists," House Speaker John Harris, R-Valdez, said last week.

In other words, they want a few good climate change deniers to present "proof" that the Interior Department scientists  are wrong.

Both House Speaker Harris and Senate President Lyda Green are behind the request for the $2 million.  Notably, Green was a co-sponsor of a 2007 Senate Resolution to oppose listing the polar bear as threatened.

At least Harris is honest about their motives, and what he thinks of scientists:

But the point is not to seek some non-biased measure of scientific truth. The point, said Harris, is to provide a forum for scientists whose views back Alaska's interests.

"You know as well as I do that scientists are like lawyers," Harris said.

Rick Steiner  is a conservation scientist at the University of Alaska.  For months, he has been attempting to get Alaska state officials to make public any scientific reasons they have for preventing the protection of polar bears:

[He said] "This truly is the conference to nowhere," [...]

On Friday [May 2, 2008], Steiner released a long chain of e-mail correspondence, saying the state first promised to send internal documents and then refused. The state Department of Law is now reviewing the internal memos from scientists to see if they can be released under the state's open records laws.

"It is stunningly hypocritical that the state will spend $2 million to convene a scientific conference on this issue, but they will not release their own scientific analysis," Steiner said.

At the end of the Anchorage Daily News article, there is a summary of a conference call (with Harris and Green).   Note the part I've highlighted in bold:

The project will include research methodologies such as computer modeling and perceived consensus. Research shall be non-biased to specific groups' opinion and shall present scientifically fact based outcomes.

Non-biased?  Since when were climate change skeptics "non-biased"?  By definition, this conference is being paid for and convened to dispute extensive research that proves polar bears are endangered, to provide a platform for those tired old denier talking points  with which we are so familiar.  

Stay tuned.  I'm sure we'll see soon enough that the "experts" they'll call aren't exactly "non-biased".

• There are a couple of updates on the Heartland Institute's "500 Scientist List" smackdown.  Not only has it turned out that many of the scientists on the list are not climate change deniers, and never consented to be on the list, but some of them are even dead.  Also:

  The Heartland Institute has withdrawn its claim of having identified "500 Scientists with Documented Doubts about Global Warming Scares," but is refusing the demands by dozens of those scientists to be removed from the Heartland's original offending document.

  And, five New Zealand scientists have actually sent out a press release saying although the Heartland Institute put them on the list, they also never consented to be put on the list.

  The story continues to develop.  You can follow it on the blog that broke the story, at DeSmogBlog.com.  Bloggy activism at its best!

• Cool story:

  One of the first things U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen (D–Wisc.) did when he took office last year was to nix his congressional health care coverage. The move stunned a human resources staffer, who, the lawmaker says, looked at him as though he were insane.  

  "I'll respectfully decline until you can make that same offer for all of my constituents," he says he told her, explaining his decision to turn down what many say is the Cadillac of U.S. health plans.

  [snip]

  Kagen's seemingly brazen act was part of his health care reform strategy. In February he introduced the "No Discrimination in Health Insurance Act of 2008" (H.R. 5449), which would bar insurance companies from hiking rates or denying coverage for preexisting medical conditions.

• Nerd news from New Mexico:

  Los Alamos National Laboratory is looking for a private developer to pay for and build a new science complex, officials said Wednesday.

  Under the proposal, LANL would lease the 5-acre complex from the developer to consolidate about 1,600 employees— about a third of the lab's work force— now housed in aging buildings spread throughout the lab.

  Officials say construction can begin relatively soon because the proposal does not depend on congressional funding.

  Any LANL scientists out there?  What do you think -- should the proposal have the advice of Congress?

• More from New Mexico:  if you're a Martin Heinrich fan, or want to find out more about him, his campaign office opening event is on May 10, 2008 (this upcoming Saturday).  RSVP here.  Heinrich is running for the NM-01 congressional seat, against Bush's good buddy Darren White.  Enough said.
• Bush approval rating down to 60 percent among Republicans, Gallup finds.
• Gitmo judge threatens to suspend trial of Canadian detainee because the government's withholding records, according to AP.
• A couple of mining companies are finally called to task for miner deaths. First, Massey Energy is cited by MSHA for safety violations that led to a death in West Virginia. Then, a Congressional investigation recommends that the general manager of Crandall Mine in Utah be brought up on criminal charges for hiding information from the feds.
• Since 2003, a total of 43,000 troops may have been deployed when they were medically unfit for combat, according to a Pentagon report cited by USA Today.
• Get ready for Paulville, a proposed gated community for Ron Paul acolytes.
• Business Week finds men are getting hit harder by the job slump and women are actually gaining.

It's a very bad day for the chronic climate change deniers at the right wing "think" tank, the Heartland Institute.

The folks at DeSmogBlog have discovered an inconvenient truth about the Heartland Institute's "500 climate scientists" list:

Dozens of scientists are demanding that their names be removed from a widely distributed Heartland Institute  article entitled 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares.

The article, by Hudson Institute director and Heartland "Senior Fellow" Dennis T. Avery (inset), purports to list scientists whose work contradicts the overwhelming scientific agreement that human-induced climate change is endangering the world as we know it.

DeSmogBlog manager Kevin Grandia emailed 122 of the scientists yesterday afternoon, calling their attention to the list.

They updated the news with:

UPDATE: we have received notes now from 45 outraged scientists whose names appear on the list of 500. We've published more quotes here.

A sample quote:

"I am horrified to find my name on such a list. I have spent the last 20 years arguing the opposite."

Dr. David Sugden. Professor of Geography, University of Edinburgh

Ouch.

Make sure you click all the links, especially the one in the update, and bookmark DeSmogBlog so you can keep up with the story as it develops.

This is an open thread.  The Flat Earth floor is yours, for eco-news and anything else that's on your mind.

And, of course, you can read the Overnight News Digest here.

• NH Senator John Sununu thinks net neutrality is dangerous.
• New Mexico GOP Senator-wannabees Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce continue to roll out the "I'm more conservative than you" ads.  Heather Wilson has released her first ad a couple of days ago:

  "Why is Steve Pearce running a negative campaign?" the ad's narrator asks. "Because on important issues, he's wrong. Steve Pearce voted against adding 3,000 border guards to secure our border. And when Democrats tried to cut funding for the troops and require early withdrawal, Steve Pearce didn't vote."

  The ad goes on to tout Wilson as the "commonsense conservative who can win in November."

• More NM Senate race news, from our side of the political fence:

  Senate candidate and U.S. Rep Tom Udall, D-N.M., has joined with U.S. Senate candidate Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., in New Hampshire to create a joint fundraising committee called New Hampshire/New Mexico Victory 2008 according to CQ Politics.

  Udall and Shaheen are also both part of the three Senate seats a coalition of environmental groups are targeting to help put pro-environment candidates in office.  The third is the Colorado Senate race with Udall's cousing, Mark Udall, D-C.O.

• For all you Donna Edwards fans, here's some news from Maryland:

  Democratic Party leaders in Montgomery and Prince George's counties have chosen lawyer Donna Edwards as their candidate for a special election to fill the remaining six months of Rep. Albert R. Wynn's term.

  Edwards had defeated Wynn in the February primary. She is scheduled to face Republican Peter James in the November election for the 4th District seat.

• Bush is definitely Commander-in-Chief of stupid jokes, but at least Craig Ferguson was mildly entertaining at Bush's last White House Correspondents' Dinner:

  Scottish-born Mr Ferguson asked Mr Bush what he was planning to do after leaving office, suggesting: "You could look for a job with more vacation time."

  The president has been criticised for the amount of time he has spent away from the White House during his presidency.

  Vice-President Dick Cheney, Mr Ferguson said, "is already moving out of his residence. It takes longer than you think to pack up an entire dungeon".

• And finally, some history: on this day in 1945, Russian and American troops literally joined hands at the River Elbe in Germany.

• Ivan Oelrich of the Federation of American Scientists slams Ben Stein's Flat Earther Porn "intelligent design" movie, in his blog post "Ben Stein Is Very, Very Wrong: Problems with Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed".
• Speaking of Flat Earthers, Sen. James "Global Warming Is A Hoax" Inhofe (R-OK) has received another award to bolster his "Enemy of the Environment" cred (as if he needed more):

  U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) this week was honored with the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association’s (OIPA) "2008 Friend of the Wildcatter" award for his service to Oklahoma’s oil and natural gas industry.  Inhofe, who serves as ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has long supported efforts to increase domestic production.The award recognizes Inhofe as " ‘Friend of the Wildcatter’ for voting consistently in the 110th Congress to grow the economy, protect Oklahoma’s oil and natural gas industry jobs, and increase domestic exploration and production."

  ("Wlldcatter" defined here.)

• Check out this cool BBC News interview with some of Obama's childhood friends... in Indonesia:

  In the playground of his old school, I met up with two of his classmates - Mary and Rina. Was there anything special about him, I asked?

  "No," said Mary. "He wasn't a special boy, just an ordinary one. But maybe that's the special thing; he had a capability to blend with any kind of situation."

  One thing marked him out as different though, said Rina - his ambition, noted in the school memoir book.

  "At that time, here in Indonesia, all the parents pushed their kids: 'You have to become a doctor' or 'You have to become an engineer'," she told me. "But he wrote that he'd like to be a president. So we thought, 'Oh in your dreams!'"

  And maybe in January 2009....?

• Also from the BBC:  Radio 4's "Donald Rumsfeld Soundbites".  Click here for the streaming audio.

  "I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past.  I think the past was not predictable when it started."

  Thanks for the memories, Rummy.  Not.

• The Albuquerque Journal started a series today on the primaries.  They kicked it off with the Heather Wilson - Steve Pearce "who's more conservative?" war.  Of course, the Journal screws it up right away, buying into Wilson's spin:

  The battle-tested congresswoman from the Albuquerque-based 1st Congressional District is once again fighting for her political life as she campaigns for the U.S. Senate seat Sen. Pete Domenici will relinquish in January after 36 years in office.

  Wilson, a moderate Republican, faces Rep. Steve Pearce, a conservative, three-term congressman from southern New Mexico, in the June 3 Republican primary election.

  She's about as "moderate" as McCain.  Pearce is more conservative, but not by much.  Oh well, it's the Albuquerque Journal... New Mexico Dems are familiar with its unreliable reporting.

  New Mexico blogger Heath Haussamen has more on the current state of the Senate race here.

• Funny stuff: "If ABC ran the Lincoln-Douglas Debates".

Note:  see update at the end.  He changed his mind.  Well, he got some free press to help his "straight-talkin' tough guy, just like Dubya" image take hold.

Maybe he'll start clearing brush next.

It could be a campaign ad.  "I'm John McCain.  I'm badass.  I don't need Secret Service protection."

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) may be the presumptive GOP nominee for president, but, by his own wishes, he is not being protected by the Secret Service.

"He has not requested protection," Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan told a congressional subcommittee this morning. "We have no involvement at this point."

In opting not to take the protection, McCain is following through on plans he outlined to reporters late last year on his Straight Talk Express campaign bus.

Last November, McCain said:

"It's my intention, if we win this nomination, to reject Secret Service," he said during one of his many conversations with reporters on his Straight Talk Express this weekend. "Why do I need it?"

He adds: "The day that the Secret Service can assure me that if we're driving in the motorcade and there's a guy in a rooftop with a rifle, that they can stop that guy, then I'll say fine. But the day they tell me, 'well, we can't guarantee it,' then fine, I'll take my chances."

McCain rejected Secret Service protection in 2000, after winning the New Hampshire primary. But he wants to go further, rejecting the massive security apparatus should he become president.

"It's the inconvenience," McCain said. "It's the inconvenience it causes people. It's a waste of the taxpayers money. It's just everything I don't like."

Read the whole thing.  It's just bewildering.  "It's a waste of taxpayers money,".  Well, how about the Iraq War?

Speaking of which, if McCain is so tough, why'd he need all that protection when he took his famous stroll in Baghdad last year?

NBC’s Nightly News provided further details about McCain’s one-hour guided tour. He was accompanied by "100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead." Still photographs provided by the military to NBC News seemed to show McCain wearing a bulletproof vest during his visit.

This is a guy who's running for Commander-in-Chief of the United States.  This is the guy who'll have access to "The Football".  This is the guy who is supposed to have good judgment.

There's really nothing much more to say.

Update: Looks like he changed his mind.  I assume he'll stick with that decision.

October 6, 2001.  Across America, people were opening their newspapers to read about Bush's impending war in Afghanistan, or maybe another article about the September 11 terrorist attacks.  Chances are, most only gave the following article a brief glance:

Florida Man Dies of Rare Form of Anthrax

A 63-year-old Florida man who had been hospitalized with pulmonary anthrax on Tuesday died today, state health officials said.

Of course, in light of the September 11 attacks, the word "terrorism" was whispered, but public health officials firmly stated that did not yet know how the man had contracted the disease.

A New York City Emergency Service police officer inspects a mailbox on New York's Fifth Avenue, yesterday. (October 17, 2001) -- AP photo

However, by October 9, the FBI had taken over the case, which was now making front page news;  by October 11, three people had died in Florida.  On October 13, the news broke that an NBC employee in New York had contracted anthrax:

Anthrax case confirmed in New York

An NBC employee in New York today tested positive for anthrax, following tests at the offices of the TV network after mail containing a suspicious powder was received.

The anthrax was not the inhaled form of the disease, which killed a Florida man a week ago. The female NBC employee has the skin form of the disease and is expected to recover, the network said.

With the US Capitol in the background, members of the US Marine Corps' chemical-biological incident response force demonstrate anthrax clean-up techniques... — AP photo

Three days later, headlines across the nation announced:

Anthrax threat comes to Congress

New security precautions and a swelling unease swept the U.S. Capitol and much of the nation yesterday after a letter testing positive for anthrax was opened in the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

The discovery of a letter containing a powdery substance and a Trenton, N.J., postmark brought the reality of terrorism literally to Congress' desktop in the most direct way since the attack Sept. 11 on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. It caused officials to redouble efforts to secure the buildings and people on Capitol Hill and to search for a common thread.

Until 2001, there had only been 18 fatal cases of pulmonary anthrax in the US in the past 100 years;  the 10 fatal cases in 2001 were the first in US history caused by an intentional release of anthrax.  Eventually, public health officials were able to determine that seven anthrax-laden letters were were mailed;  four were opened.

Americans waited on the edge of their seats for the FBI to announce that they’d caught the culprit (or culprits). Publicly, it looks like they hit some rough spots early on; investigators argued about the possible source of the anthrax: who might have formulated the weapon?  Was it "weaponized"?  Military grade?  Were the perpetrator(s) former US military lab researcher(s), or maybe just researcher(s) in a civilian lab?  (The Bush administration immediately tried to pin it on Saddam, of course.)

In any case, it was agreed that the anthrax was "energetic", and "professionally done", became airborne easily, and was therefore readily inhaled and effective as a weapon.

Five years (and many conspiracy theories) later, the feds gave their last update.  They said that they're still on the case, and that it has high priority.

However, yesterday Fox News claims to have obtained an email exchanged between US Army scientists regarding "about four" possible suspects:

The FBI has narrowed its focus to "about four" suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.

Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.

The FBI has collected writing samples from the three scientists in an effort to match them to the writer of anthrax-laced letters that were mailed to two U.S. senators and at least two news outlets in the fall of 2001, a law enforcement source confirmed.

[snip]

.. in an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.

"Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared ... to duplicate the letter material," the e-mail reads. "Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same ... his knees got shaky and he sputtered, 'But I told the General we didn't make spore powder!'"

This is not news.  In my opinion, it's only slightly more specific than any previous knowledge gained from the investigation, which has been plagued with problems and scientific disagreements from the beginning.  And, even though the FBI publicly chose to focus on one "person of interest", it has been implied that there were multiple suspects since the beginning of the investigation, as Richard Preston describes in his book The Demon in the Freezer.

Preston quotes a conversation he had with a forensic microbiologist who is also a former FBI agent:

We just don't know who these perpetrators are, and it could be years before we get a break... I personally find it hard to believe that it was done by only one person.  That's just gut.  I don't know why, I can't put my finger on it.

Fox may think they have a scoop, but their article (and most likely the email) is essentially a re-hash of old speculation, and is only slightly more specific than the musings of Preston's source.

This is a pretty exciting election year for voters in the Land of Enchantment (or the "Land of the Enchanted", as Bush once called it).  We have races in all three of our congressional districts, plus a Senate race.  Last week, mcjoan updated us on the Senate race;  the fine folks at New Mexico FBIHOP have a great summary of all three Congressional races here.

A couple of days ago, CQ Politics turned the spotlight on NM-01 (click the map to enlarge) -- a small district whose complicated race was triggered by Sen. Pete Domenici's retirement:

New Mexico faces an unusual total turnover of its U.S. House delegation, with all three members — Democrat Tom Udall and Republicans Heather A. Wilson and Steve Pearce — running for the Senate seat left open by retiring Republican Pete V. Domenici . And while each of the three districts is staging an open house for open-seat candidates, the most intense scramble may be occurring in the Albuquerque-based 1st, a partisan battleground district of long standing.

The state’s preliminary candidate filing deadline passed Tuesday, and seven major-party candidates — five Democrats and two Republicans — are in the race to succeed Republican Wilson, who won a hard-fought and narrow re-election victory in 2006 over Democrat Patricia Madrid, then New Mexico’s attorney general.

In 2004, the district voted Kerry over Bush by 3 percent.  CQ has rated the district as "no clear favorite", but that will most likely change soon:

One recent officeholder, former New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, announced Feb. 2 she would run for the Democratic nomination, emphasizing her background as an 11th generation New Mexican. Other well-known figures seeking the nomination are former Albuquerque Councilman Martin Heinrich and former state Health Secretary Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Vigil-Giron and Lujan Grisham both are Hispanic. Christine Sierra, a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, said this could boost them in a district in which Hispanics make up well more than two-fifths of the population. But they could split the Hispanic vote, which also will be pursued by Heinrich, the best-known among the non-Hispanic white candidates. Heinrich entered the race in April, before Domenici announced his retirement plans and incumbent Wilson shifted her sights to the Senate race.

The other two candidates are Robert Pidcock and Jessica Wolfe, who was an aide to Bill Richardson.  Heinrich is easily the front-runner;  he's been in the race longer, and has raised some serious money:

Year-end reports indicate Heinrich led the Democratic pack in fundraising, aided in part by his early start. By Dec. 31, Heinrich raised $465,000 and had $277,000 left on hand. Lujan Grisham, the other Democrat who filed a campaign finance report, had raised $116,000 and had $96,000 on hand. The other candidates will be required to file their initial reports, for the first quarter of 2008, by April 15.

He has out-raised all of his opponents, both Democratic and Republican.

The two Republicans in the race are Bernalillo County sheriff Darren White, and state Senator Joe Carraro, who touts his experience, saying that White should "run for the Legislature" before setting his sights on D.C..

White was chairman of Bush's campaign in New Mexico in 2004, and chaired Guiliani's NM campaign as well.  He's doing his best to get the hell away from his history as a Bush acolyte, saying he's wingnut-lite "independent".  He's even changed his campaign rhetoric from "our troops must return in victory [from Iraq]" (video) to not saying anything about "victory" at all.

The NM primary is on 3 June.  Whether you're a Democratic or Republican voter, you're going to wish the choice was as simple as "red or green".

Race tracker wiki: NM-01

A B-52H bomber with a full load of 12 Advanced Cruise Missiles under the wings. (Click to enlarge.)

Michael Hoffman reports in Military Times that five (some say six) nuclear-armed Advanced Cruise Missiles were mistakenly flown on a B-52H bomber from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana on August 30.

I disclosed in March that the Air Force had decided to retire the Advanced Cruise Missile (ACM), and the Minot incident apparently was part of the dismantlement process of the weapon system.

The post is very thorough, and I highly recommend reading it.  He goes into detail, explaining how the DoE and DoD keep track of our nuclear weapons, a brief history of how they have been transported via aircraft (including some "incidents"), and how the transfer from Minot Air Force Base was part of decreasing our cruise missile stockpile.

Last month, the Washington Post reported on subsequent changes the Air Force has made in how they handle nuclear weapon transport:

A key change is a firm prohibition against storing nuclear armed and nonnuclear armed weapons in the same storage facility, a contributing factor in the Aug. 29 mix-up. A crew at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., using outdated information, picked up six missiles with dummy warheads and six carrying nuclear warheads from the same storage hangar. The missiles eventually were loaded on a B-52 and flown to Louisiana, where the missiles were to be decommissioned.

"Do not co-mingle nuclear and non-nuclear munitions/missiles . . . in the same storage structure, cell or WS3," the new instructions state. (A WS3 is an underground vault.) The instructions were first disclosed by Stephen Aftergood on his Secrecy News Web site.

[Click here for Aftergood's post.]

Sounds like a fantastic idea.  Too bad they didn't think of it sooner...

... which leads us to what you'll find on page A02 of today's Washington Post.  The news is not good:

The Defense Department is displaying a "precipitous decrease in attention" to the security and control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, according to a Defense Science Board task force that examined the broader causes behind the U.S. flight in August of a B-52 bomber that inadvertently carried six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads.

"The decline in DoD focus has been more pronounced than realized and too extreme to be acceptable," the task force said in a report released yesterday by its chairman, retired Air Force Gen. Larry D. Welch, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Welch, who served in the 1980s as head of the Strategic Air Command and later as Air Force chief of staff, told the senators about his concern that "the nation and its leadership do not value the nuclear mission and the people who perform that mission."

I've always said that the last person (next to John McCain) who needs to have thousands and thousands of nukes (on hair-trigger status, mind you) under his control is George W. Bush.

More from the article:

The Welch panel pointed out that Air Force colonels, Navy captains and mid-level civilians are now responsible for managing the Pentagon's nuclear programs -- a task that during the Cold War was handled by senior flag officers or senior civilians. One of the panel's recommendations is the appointment of an assistant secretary of defense for nuclear enterprise reporting directly to the defense secretary, as well as the naming of flag officers in each of the services who would focus solely on nuclear weapons.

The task force's findings were reflected in a statement made before the committee by three senior Air Force officers who had supervised two other inquiries after the B-52 flight. They said the Air Force's once-central focus on its nuclear mission "has diminished since 1991," after the end of the Cold War. At the same time, they said, "the Air Force began 17 years of continuous combat including conventional air power commitments" using aircraft, such as B-52s, once reserved for nuclear operations.

[Click here (pdf) for the report, "Permanent Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Surety Report: Unauthorized Movement of Nuclear Weapons".]

Although it is expected that the Air Force would shift some of its focus from our nuclear mission after the Cold War ended, one would certainly hope that the emphasis on the safety and security of the arsenal would not diminish, especially since we have less nukes than we used to.  The key is in Ret. General Welch's quote above, which bears repeating:

"the nation and its leadership do not value the nuclear mission and the people who perform that mission."

They just value a different mission.  A George W. Bush-style mission:

The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and White House guidance issued in response to the terrorist attacks against the United States in September 2001 led to the creation of new nuclear strike options against regional states seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, according to a military planning document obtained by the Federation of American Scientists.

As Meteor Blades pointed out last November, Syria and Iran are on this new nuclear "hit list".

I'm sure John McCain loves the sound of that.

It’s naive to say that we will never use nuclear weapons.

-- John McCain, August 5, 2007, Republican Presidential Debate

Sing it, John.

Update: CNN has called Colorado and Utah for Obama.  MSNBC has called it for Clinton.