Elections Blog

It saddens many of us to see attacks on Secretary of State Rice’s Middle East peace efforts. That is her job — in case anyone has forgotten. By definition, the SoS is supposed to provide diplomatic options to the Chief Executive and then facilitate, foster, even nurture the domestic and foreign support that is typically [...]

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In preparation for further Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, Secretary of State Rice is doing her homework — even speaking with former President Carter and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright — in order to be ready to exploit any potential breakthrough at the upcoming Annapolis conference without hesitation by knowing what has worked, and what hasn’t, in the [...]

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CNN’s Lou Dobbs is something of a unique cable news journalist.  Personally, I find him to be rather pompous and self-important with his “War on the Middle Class” theme.  Also, he has an irritating anti-GOP bias that is, fortunately, readily transparent.  However, he does have some valid points and criticisms to make of both the Left and Right from [...]

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Yesterday was a “bad news day” for Iranian President Ahmadinejad as news of the 30,000 lbs “bunker buster” bomb became common knowledge with the funding requests to produce and deploy a weapon that has been under development for years. (Well, seriously under development since Clinton left office, when the term “penetration” resumed its primarily military, [...]

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(Editor’s note and correction: At the time this post was written, this incident was little more than a CSPAN video.  Reporting on this incident has taken on a life of its own in media outlets around the world.  Therefore, it has now been “widely reported.”)
Condi’s confrontation with a “Code Pink” protester yesterday during a congressional [...]

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Between the Democratic media consultants and their mainstream media brothers and sisters, the “politics of personal destruction” are alive and well. So, in an act of mercy, Secretary of State Rice accepted the resignation of Richard Griffin, the State Department’s Director of the Diplomatic Security Service, thus ending his career of 36 years in [...]

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Secretary of State Rice’s and Secretary of Defense Gates’ recent visit to Russia was widely reported as confrontational and as having made little, or no, progress.  (See the links in our post, “Putin postures, Condi walks the line.”)  There were even reports of a new “cold war.”  But after the international press corps packed up and [...]

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Although peace in the Middle East has been elusive for decades, will Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s “spiritual passion” be the catalyst that begins the long, arduous march towards that long sought after goal? Even the Washington Post is reporting on the possibility. (link, “Rice Draws on ‘Spiritual Passion’ in Push for Peace”)

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Political Wire: “A new Fox News national poll shows Sen. Hillary Clinton running away with the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton leads with 50%, followed by Sen. Barack Obama at 18%, John Edwards at 11% and Gov. Bill Richardson at 4%. Among Republicans, Rudy Giuliani is in front with 29%, followed by Fred Thompson at 16%, Sen. John McCain at 12%, Mitt Romney at 11%, and Mike Huckabee at 5%.”

Category: 2008 Presidential Election

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Political Wire: “A new Fox News national poll shows Sen. Hillary Clinton running away with the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton leads with 50%, followed by Sen. Barack Obama at 18%, John Edwards at 11% and Gov. Bill Richardson at 4%. Among Republicans, Rudy Giuliani is in front with 29%, followed by Fred Thompson at 16%, Sen. John McCain at 12%, Mitt Romney at 11%, and Mike Huckabee at 5%.”

Category: 2008 Presidential Election

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Here’s a press release about their new report Hispanics Rising: An overview of the emerging politics of America’s Hispanic population from NDN.org. They write:

For 5 years the NDN community has been telling a simple but important story - that the very rapid growth of the Hispanic community was creating a very new and powerful dynamic in the American electorate.

In our new report, Hispanics Rising, NDN reviews the emerging politics of the fastest-growing part of the American electorate, one deeply changed by the immigration debate. The report documents how Hispanics have gone from a group trending Republican to a group overwhelmingly Democratic; one whose percentage of the American electorate has increased by 33 percent in the last 4 years; and one poised, because of the structure of the Electoral College, to determine who the next President will be in 2008.

Category: 2008 Presidential Election

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According to The Greeley Tribune (free registration required) there are two meetings this weekend about Powertech’s proposed uranium mining operation in Weld County. From the article:

State and federal lawmakers are hosting meetings on Saturday and Sunday in Nunn and Denver to listen to residents’ concerns. State lawmakers also plan to announce legislation to deal with the mine. On Saturday, U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Fort Morgan, and State Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins, will be among lawmakers and interested residents hosting a meeting in Nunn about the mine. The following day, Democratic lawmakers will join Johnson and others at the state Capitol in Denver to announce new legislation for the upcoming session of the Colorado General Assembly, which convenes in January…

Community forum Saturday, Oct. 14
When: 2 p.m.
Where: Nunn Community Center, 185 Lincoln Ave., Nunn

Capitol rally Sunday, Oct. 14
What: Larimer County lawmakers will announce legislation to address the proposed mine.
When : 2 p.m.
Where : Colorado State Capitol, West Steps, 200 W. Colfax Ave., Denver

More Coyote Gulch coverage here.

Category: 2008 Presidential Election

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Congratulations to Al Gore and the IPCC panel on climate change for landing the Nobel Prize for their work on climate change. Many scientists from Boulder had a hand in the IPCC report including 14 that honchoed individual chapters. Here’s a short bio on each from The Boulder Daily Camera (free registration required). They write:

On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize would be shared between former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Most recently, the IPCC released its fourth assessment report on the state of climate change, which said humans are “very likely” the cause of global warming. Dozens of scientists from Boulder contributed to the assessment, but 14 of them worked as lead authors on chapters for at least one section of the report, writing and incorporating feedback from thousands of comments from their peers. Here are brief bios of Boulder’s lead authors:

NCAR

Guy Brasseur, director of NCAR’s Earth and Sun Systems Laboratory, is an atmospheric chemist who has worked on global models of atmospheric chemistry and chemical transport in the atmosphere.

William Collins studies the interactions of sunlight and heat with greenhouse gases and other constituents in Earth’s atmosphere.

Elisabeth Holland, an NCAR senior scientist, studies the link between the chemistry of the atmosphere and ecosystems on Earth.

Reto Knutti, an NCAR visiting scientist, is an expert on climate models. His work focuses on projections of future climate and estimating the uncertainty of model scenarios.

Patricia Romero Lankao is a sociologist who studies the causes and societal impacts of climate change, especially in cities.

Linda Mearns, an NCAR senior scientist and director of the center’s Institute for the Study of Society and Environment, specializes in the regional impacts of climate change, the potential effects of global warming on agriculture, and variability and uncertainty in climate-change studies.

Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at NCAR, studies projections of future climate change and tropical climate variability.

Kathleen Miller is an economist who studies the policy implications of climate change on water supplies, aquatic ecosystems, marine fisheries and wildfire hazards.

Bette Otto-Bliesner uses climate models to investigate past climates and climate variability, with an emphasis on changes in temperature and sea level.

Kevin Trenberth is an NCAR senior scientist and head of the center’s Climate Analysis Section. His specialties include global climate change, climate variability and El Niño, the hydrological cycle and climate observations.

NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory

David Fahey is a physicist whose research at NOAA includes using unmanned aircraft systems and the effects of aircraft exhaust on climate.

Roger Pulwarty is a senior scientist at NOAA and the program manager for the U.S. National Integrated Drought Information System. He studies the role of climate and weather in society-environment interactions.

CU’s National Snow and Ice Data Center

Tingjun Zhang is an NSIDC senior scientist who specializes in permafrost and its possible impacts on climate.

Stratus Consulting

Joel Smith, vice president of Stratus Consulting, analyzes climate-change impacts and adaptation issues.

Congratulations to all for your contributions to science.

More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.

Category: 2008 Presidential Election

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“I still think there’s a 25 percent chance that Al Gore gets in. I don’t think it’s too late.” - Democratic strategist James Carville, quoted by The Examiner

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In a moment of political theater designed for domestic Russian consumption, Putin pounded on his political chest by “dissing” Secretary Rice and Secretary Gates with a more than “fashionably late” arrival to their meeting yesterday while delivering a message that the planned anti-ballistic missile shield in Europe would trigger ominous changes in US-Russia relations. He [...]

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So far only one presidential candidate is talking about water. Here’s an article about Bill Richardson raising the hackles of environmentalists around the Great Lakes by talking about sharing, from Mlive.com. From the article:

Michigan environmental activists Thursday accused New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson of suggesting that northern states — including the Great Lakes region — share water with the Sun Belt. “Richardson’s assault is the latest in a lengthy list of schemes to siphon Great Lakes water to other areas of the nation and the world,” said a statement issued by five groups, including the Michigan Environmental Council and the state chapter of the Sierra Club. A spokesman for Richardson, a Democratic presidential hopeful, said if elected he would “embrace a national water policy that will specifically help protect the authority of states and the rights of local communities throughout the country.”

In an Oct. 4 story, the Las Vegas Sun quoted Richardson as saying as president he would encourage northern states with plenty of water to help those with shortages in the Southwest. “I want a national water policy,” he said. “We need a dialogue between states to deal with issues like water conservation, water reuse technology, water delivery and water production. States like Wisconsin are awash in water.” He did not refer specifically to the Great Lakes. But his remark about Wisconsin — one of the eight Great Lakes states — touched a nerve in neighboring Michigan. Water levels have fallen across the upper Great Lakes since the late 1990s. Lake Superior’s level in September was the lowest on record for that month…

“Gov. Richardson apparently understands neither the dynamics of a Great Lakes ecosystem that renews its water at a rate of only 1 percent each year, nor the globally significant resource that the Great Lakes represent,” said David Holtz, spokesman for Clean Water Action. Environmentalists said Richardson’s comments underscored the need for the Great Lakes states to ratify a pending compact that would outlaw most diversions of water from the region.

Category: 2008 Presidential Election

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From Scenta, “Each year, in the south eastern part of Greenland alone, the glaciers produce a mass of icebergs which is equivalent to a gigantic ice cube measuring 6.5 km on all sides. But the reduction of the inland ice is accelerating. At the moment, four times as much inland ice is disappearing compared to the beginning of the decade. ‘If this development continues, the melt water from the inland ice will make the world’s seas rise by more than 60 cm this century,’ said senior researcher Abbas Khan of the Danish National Research Centre, who was responsible for the research project. The results were obtained in co-operation with the University of Colorado and have just been published in the international research magazine Geophysical Research Letters.”

Category: 2008 Presidential Election

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H.R. 2222, the Hardrack Mining Act of 2007, has been introduced in Congress as a set of reforms hoping to prevent some of the environmental damage from the General Mining Act of 1872. Proponents also hope to restructure the royalty system and compel mining operations to clean up after their operations are over. Here’s a opinion piece about the bill from The Fort Collins Coloradoan. They write:

Mining technology has changed; the United States has evolved. Yet, today, the act that governs mining on federal lands such as Rocky Mountain National Park sits relatively unaltered. But a modern-day boom in hard-rock mining claims - particularly for uranium - should provide inspiration for passage of the Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007, which was introduced in Congress this spring and is facing committee review…

Fueling modern-day concerns over this gap is that so many of the hard-rock mining companies operating in the United States today are foreign-owned, meaning they are extracting resources from public lands without any compensation to the U.S. Treasury.

A reform effort makes sense because it recognizes both the important economic contribution of mining as well as the responsibility to ensure fiscal and environmental accountability. The legislation:

> Requires the payment of royalties to the federal government based on gross extraction.

> Shifts the burden of cleanup costs from taxpayers to the mining industry. Some royalties will be used for reclamation of thousands of abandoned mines.

> Injects a citizen-review process to reassess, every three years, a mining project’s bond and permit.

So far, key sticking points between the mining industry and bill proponents appear to be charging royalties on gross extraction rather than net income and additional environmental oversight.

More Coyote Gulch coverage here.

Category: Colorado Water

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