Environmental News Since George Bush Won His Second Term.                    Back

11/2/04: (CNN) OSLO, Norway (Reuters) -- A thaw of the Arctic icecap is accelerating because of global warming but nations in the region including the United States are deadlocked about how to stop it.

11/9/04: (CNN) OSLO, Norway (Reuters) -- Global warming is heating the Arctic almost twice as fast as the rest of the planet in a thaw that threatens millions of livelihoods and could wipe out polar bears by 2100, an eight-nation report said on Monday  I thought their wasn't any global warming, after all that's what George Bush told me.

11/9/04: (CNN) WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican gains in the Senate could give President Bush his best chance yet to achieve his No. 1 energy priority: opening an oil-rich but environmentally sensitive Alaska wildlife refuge to drilling.  Not only will this area only give us an estimated 2 to 3 years of oil but it will be oil we won't be able to regain in the future when we may really need it, plus it will be very dangerous to the environment both in the drilling and the shipping.

11/10/04: (CNN) WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush is holding fast to his rejection of mandatory curbs on greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming, despite a fresh report from 300 scientists in the United States and seven other nations that shows Arctic temperatures are rising.

11/11/04: (CNN) DENVER, Colorado (Reuters) -- The U.S. government expects to release a draft management plan this month detailing its plan for natural gas drilling in an environmentally sensitive area in western Colorado known as the Roan Plateau. This is a gift from George Bush to the stupid voters (Not all the voters) in Colorado & the people who voted the way the N.R.A. wanted them to. What good are your guns when there won't be any where to hunt?

11/12/04: (CNN)  WASHINGTON (AP) -- A planned government study into how children's bodies absorb pesticides and other chemicals has been temporarily suspended due to ethical concerns. The EPA  had agreed to accept $2 million for the $9 million study from the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical makers.  What a good way to buy influence in the study.

11/16/04: (CNN) CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- Increases in air pollution caused by cars, power plants and industry can be directly linked to higher death rates in U.S. cities, a study said. Don't tell the Bush administration you heard it here.

11/17/04: (CNN) LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Mount Everest should be put on a United Nations danger list as global warming threatens the Himalayan region, environmentalists have said.

11/18/04: (CNN) WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Democrats and environmental groups said changes in the Bush administration Cabinet could moderate a White House plan to open some 60 million acres of federal forests to logging.

11/18/04: (CNN) WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Sierra Club alleges in a lawsuit that the Bush administration changed a rule so oil and gas producers could more easily drill under national parks from outside their boundaries.

11/24/04: (CNN) WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. state and local air pollution control officials said on Tuesday they are pulling out of five-year-old talks to develop a voluntary program for reducing pollution from aircraft engines.

11/25/04: (CNN) WASHINGTON (AP) -- Concentrations of a flame retardant banned by many European countries have been found in Lake Michigan and are increasing, adding to concerns over previous findings that the chemicals were showing up in supermarket foods and women's breast milk.

12/01/04: (CNN) WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government has found traces of a rocket fuel chemical in organic milk in Maryland, green leaf lettuce grown in Arizona and bottled spring water from Texas and California. Sufficient amounts of perchlorate can affect the thyroid, potentially causing delayed development and other problems.

12/01/04: (CNN) GRANTS PASS, Oregon (AP) -- The Bush administration Tuesday proposed large cuts in federally designated areas in the Northwest and California meant to aid the recovery of threatened or endangered salmon. Protection would focus instead on rivers where the fish now thrive.   Ah! hell, they're only fish, besides if there are less fish in the market, maybe ranchers can charge more for their beef.  Didn't George Bush claim he had increased the wetlands that were under government protection? Another Flip-Flop?

12/6/04: (CNN) WASHINGTON (AP) -- Only about 30 percent of the world's coral reefs are healthy, down from 41 percent two years ago, according to a study released Monday that lists global warming as the top threat.

12/10/04: (CNN) We recently had a large oil spill in the Delaware River just below Philadelphia now this: ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- A major spill of dense, viscous fuel from a freighter that ran aground was menacing sensitive wildlife habitat in the Aleutian Islands, but finding the six crew members lost at sea remained a priority -- despite their diminishing odds for survival.  Thousands of gallons of heavy bunker fuel and diesel spilled from a soybean freighter that was ripped clean in half off the shore of Unalaska Island. Near a wildlife refuge. Do you really want to ship extremely large quantities of crude oil through these dangerous, yet environmentally delicate, waters. They will either have to ship the oil or pipe it out through an area that is earthquake prone if they open the Alaska wildlife refuge. See 11/9/04 above.

12/11/04: (CNN) -- Authorities struggled Saturday against adverse weather conditions to determine the extent of an oil spill from a Malaysia-flagged cargo vessel that foundered in frigid waters off Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Booms have been laid in an effort to protect salmon streams, and helicopters were headed to the site to assess the extent of the spill, she said. And this was only a soybean freighter not an oil tanker. In 1989, thousands of seabirds and other marine animals were killed and more than 1,200 miles of shoreline contaminated when the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in south-central Alaska's Prince William Sound, spilling almost 11 million gallons of crude oil.

12/10/04: (CNN) LONDON, England (Reuters) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair is trying to involve the United States in a new international treaty on global warming, The Times newspaper said on Thursday. If Blair can do it I'll be surprised. The ties between the administration & the energy industry are just to profound.

12/11/04: (CNN) BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- A new report on ecological damage from greenhouse gases dominated the sidelines of a U.N. conference on global warming Saturday as delegates from nearly 200 nations assembled to prepare for the launch next year of the Kyoto Protocol.

12/15/04: (CNN) ITHACA, New York (AP) -- As the first signs of winter push into the Northeast, researchers have some good news for fair weather fans -- spring is coming earlier than it used to. In one of the most comprehensive studies that plants in the Northeast are responding to the global warming trend, Cornell scientists and their colleagues at the University of Wisconsin found lilacs are blooming about four days earlier than they did in 1965. People, more & more information is becoming available that shows that global warming is definitely happening. This information taken by itself may not mean anything but when you add it all up it's a pretty conclusive case.

12/16/04: (CNN) BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- The year 2004, punctuated by four powerful hurricanes in the Caribbean and deadly typhoons lashing Asia, was the fourth-hottest on record, extending a trend since 1990 that has registered the 10 warmest years, a U.N. weather agency said Wednesday. The current year was also the most expensive for the insurance industry in coping worldwide with hurricanes, typhoons and other weather-related natural disasters, according to new figures released by U.N. environmental officials. The cost of cleaning up after hurricanes and other natural disasters brought on by global warming (Including the human cost) are more then the cost that will be incurred by industry in cleaning up their act.

12/15/04: (AP) Washington -- Former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman in her new book "It's my party too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America." say she was often at odds with the administration on environmental issues. People when Christie Whitman, New Jersey's most environmentally destructive Governor goes against the administration's policies you have to realize how bad they are.

12/18/04: (Reuters) BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) -- U.N. talks on climate change ended early Saturday with few steps forward as the United States, oil producers and developing giants slammed the brakes on the European Union's drive for deeper emissions cuts to stop global warming.

12/21/04: (CNN) SHARPSBURG, Maryland (AP) -- Male fish that are growing eggs have been found in the Potomac River near Sharpsburg, a sign that a little-understood type of pollution is spreading downstream from West Virginia, a federal scientist says. The so-called intersex abnormality may be caused by pollutants from sewage plants, feedlots and factories that can interfere with animals' hormone systems, The Washington Post reported Sunday. Would you want to swim in the Potomac now?

12/22/04: (CNN)  Court orders review of Yellowstone trout status. Court said government 'arbitrarily' rejected petition for protection. BILLINGS, Montana (AP) -- A federal judge in Colorado has ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to re-evaluate the status of Yellowstone cutthroat trout and whether the fish should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Thank God we have some sane judges who aren't controlled by big business & the Bush administration.

I Hope you people who voted for Bush are paying attention to what he's doing.

Ask yourselves why the administration hasn't asked Americans to try and conserve energy as most democratic administrations have. One of Dick Chaney's first public statements was to ask Americans to use more energy. He said it was good for the economy. Ha! good for the energy industry, bad for the environment.

People, don't expect the Democrats to bail us out this time. After George Bush & his administration get through setting Environmental Protection back decades, it may just be to late.

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