PushBack » Environment

Stop Eco-Frauds From Worsening the Recession

Peter Sheerin — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 21:35:29 +0000

The effort to stop the California Air Resources Board (CARB) from continuing to punish us citizens for living and getting to work has taken on a new urgency, with the inclusion of Proposition 23 on the November 2010 ballot.

Please help Clean the CARB and stop regulations that will cost tons of money, provide little or no environmental benefit, and put California and the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world, which is steadily stealing jobs from our workforce.

Flashback: Sacramento Bee Exposé on Environmental Orgs

Peter Sheerin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 04:39:40 +0000

Nine years ago, the Sacramento Bee published a five-part series of articles exposing the elitist policies of the Sierra Club and other so-called environmental organizations.

The series has long since disappeared from the newspaper’s web site, but thanks to the Internet Archive, most of the content is still available.

Visit The Sacramento Bee’s Expose: Environmental Organizations Are Now Big-Business on this site to read the story of how these organizations seem obsessed with fund raising and lawsuits simply for the sake of the dollar, without caring how many of those dollars actually go to help the environment.

And worse, many of their actions have led directly to vast devastating forest fires that could have been prevented by careful thinning of dead and diseased trees.

Cougars Wiping Out Sierra Bighorn Sheep

Peter Sheerin — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 01:56:00 +0000

A reminder of yesterday’s news: A 1998 Chronicle article pointed out that the Proposition 117 protection for mountain lions was allowing them to decimate the remains of the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep population.

Coastal Commission Blocks Devil’s Slide Tunnel

Peter Sheerin — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 05:44:00 +0000

Progress on the $275 million, 4,000-foot twin-bore tunnel approved by San Mateo County voters way back in 1996, and supposed to begin construction this fall, has been blocked by the California Coastal Commission over the transfer of a small parcel of land.

Approved by the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors in May, the Commission filed an appeal in late July to block the project. Caltrans’ promise to transfer the Martini Creek Devil’s Slide property to California State Parks after construction is completed is not good enough—they want the transfer written into law before giving their final blessing to the project.

More details can be found in this article from the San Mateo Times: Devil’s Slide tunnel tossed a curve ball. State Senator Bryon Sher is the author of the legislation, SB 792.

Logging Blamed for Wildfires?

Peter Sheerin — Mon, 17 Nov 2003 00:23:00 +0000

Looking through my newspaper clippings, I came across an LA Times article from 2002 citing a University of Idaho fire ecologist, claiming a link between heavy logging and an increase of big-burn forest fires. I ’m not sure of the validity of the claims in the article, but the accompanying charts of logging and fires from 1945 to 1995 are interesting in and of themselves.

Using materials efficiently

Peter Sheerin — Sat, 03 May 2003 19:57:00 +0000

Page 17 of the July 2001 issue of Popular Science shows a metal can with a honeycomb pattern of indentations on it, formed by water pressure. Invented by Frank Mirtsch, this technique is claimed to provide enough strength to allow 20–40% less material to be used. So why hasn’t some smart government bought the patent, and then given the technology away to anyone that wants to use it? It seems to me that doing so could greatly aid the environment.

Asteroid impact forecast

Peter Sheerin — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 03:57:00 +0000

NASA has a new Web page devoted to predicting the risk of asteroid impacts with the Earth. Unfortunately, the page lists only the risks associated with asteroids we have found—not those that may be on a collision course that we haven’t seen yet.

Enviros get defensive about “Skeptical Environmentalist”

Peter Sheerin — Sun, 19 Jan 2003 21:11:00 +0000

A reader pointed me to this nearly year-old article about the environmentalist attacks against statistician Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. I’m posting this oldish link because of its timeliness. You should also read Mr. Lomborg’s response to the latest attack on him—a danish scientific community claim that his work is not science. This group uses the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as an example of proper science—a body that bases scientific proclamations on a vote of its members. A majority vote does not constitute scientific proof.

Are Wildland Fires Fueling The Greenhouse?

Peter Sheerin — Wed, 01 Jan 2003 09:02:00 +0000

Wildland fires are taking tons of carbon out of storage and feeding it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, as reported by Science Daily. This is the preliminary result of a study from the National Center For Atmospheric Research: massive forest fires may be contributing to global warming.

CA Coastal Commission ruled illegal

Peter Sheerin — Tue, 31 Dec 2002 23:00:00 +0000

In what may turn out to be a major victory for property rights and making the government follow the constitution, today’s SF Chronicle reports, “Coastal Commission ruled illegal”.

As the court put it, the “agency violates ‘separation of powers’ ”.