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Southeast Alaska: FY2018 Draft Interior, Environment Appropriations Bill Released; Conservation Groups Say Bill Would Greenlight Old-growth Logging in Tongass National Forest - U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) released her Fiscal Year 2018 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act recommendation, which she said will support key programs to protect the health of our economy. Known as the chairman’s mark, the draft recommends responsible funding levels and serves as the basis of the subcommittee’s appropriations bill negotiations for the new fiscal year.

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski said, “This bill will empower Americans to build our economy and create healthy communities for our families. As chairman, I’ve worked hard to address key priorities, from ensuring our parks are adequately staffed, to prioritizing healthcare through IHS, and focusing on public safety.”

Murkowski said, “In this draft bill, we direct federal resources where they are needed by investing in programs aimed to protect people and our lands, enable new infrastructure projects to boost the economy, and help communities provide vital, basic services.” 

The Center for Biological Diversity is concerned that the draft proposed Monday will accelerate old-growth logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest and allow development in roadless areas throughout Alaska’s national forests. The proposals are part of the committee's draft legislation to fund the U.S. Department of the Interior in 2018.

Audubon Alaska is concerned the rider introduced by Murkowski on the Senate Interior and Environment appropriations bill would erase the 2016 Tongass Land Management Plan (TLMP) amendment and replace it with the old 2008 plan.

“While the 2016 TLMP amendment had flaws, it kept the momentum moving toward ending old-growth clearcut logging on the Tongass National Forest,” said Susan Culliney, Audubon Alaska’s Policy Director. “Returning to the 2008 plan will be a significant step backward in the effort to transition away from this outdated practice. Perpetuating clearcutting is bad for American taxpayers who lose millions of dollars subsidizing the industry. This bill is a loser for ecology, economy, and public process.”

One of the stated reasons for this bill, according to Audubon Alaska, is maintaining the economics of the timber industry in Southeast Alaska, but it does not call for an assessment as to whether clearcutting old-growth is economic. Fishing and tourism far outstrip the timber industry, and continuing to clearcut old-growth has the potential to undermine these burgeoning sectors of the regional economy.

Nils Warnock, Audubon Alaska’s Executive Director, said about seven percent of Southeast Alaska used to be characterized by the large-tree, old-growth forest that makes the region so magnificent. Now only three percent of Southeast Alaska contains these massive trees.

Warnock said, “If we want the Tongass to remain a healthy ecosystem for birds and wildlife and a place that the tourism and fishing industries can rely on, we must protect the incredible large-tree old-growth that still remains.”

“Senator Murkowski seems dead-set on rewarding her special interest benefactors even if it means trashing our nation’s iconic public lands in Alaska,” said Randi Spivak, public lands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Spivak said, “Clearcutting our old-growth and degrading roadless areas is shameful and deeply out of touch with the American people’s values.”

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the legislation would amend the 2016 land management plan for the Tongass National Forest to allow old-growth logging indefinitely. The current land management plan, which involved years of stakeholder development and public participation, provides for a transition for timber harvesting to switch from old-growth to only younger-growth trees, thereby protecting most of the remaining old-growth forests in Alaska. - More...
Tuesday PM - November 21, 2017

Alaska: Study: Added Arctic data show warming didn’t pause By MEGHAN MURPHY - Gaps in Arctic temperature data caused a misperception that global warming slowed from 1998 to 2012, according to a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change.

A University of Alaska Fairbanks professor and his colleagues in China built the first data set of surface temperatures from across the world that significantly improves representation of the Arctic during the “global warming hiatus.”

Xiangdong Zhang, an atmospheric scientist with UAF’s International Arctic Research Center, said he collaborated with colleagues at Tsinghua University in Beijing and Chinese agencies studying Arctic warming to analyze temperature data collected from buoys drifting in the Arctic Ocean.

“We recalculated the average global temperatures from 1998-2012 and found that the rate of global warming had continued to rise at 0.112C per decade instead of slowing down to 0.05C per decade as previously thought,” said Zhang, who is also a professor with UAF’s College of Natural Science and Mathematics.

Zhang said their new estimates showed that the Arctic warmed more than six times the global average during that time period.

The team developed new methods of incorporating the Arctic temperature data into global temperature data to better estimate the average temperatures. 

Most current estimates use global data that tend to represent a long time span and provide good coverage of a global geographic area. But the remote Arctic lacks a robust network of instruments to collect temperature data.

To improve the dataset in time and space, the team relied on temperature data collected from the International Arctic Buoy Program at the University of Washington. For global data, the team used newly corrected sea surface temperatures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Zhang said this study expands on NOAA research and other recent studies that have either supported or refuted the idea of a “global warming hiatus” by re-estimating the average global temperatures during that time period with more accurate and representative data.

The global warming hiatus is a much-debated topic among climate researchers. Some scientists theorized that an unusually warm El Niño in the years 1997-1998 and an extended period afterward without an El Niño in the tropical Pacific Ocean may have disrupted the rate of global warming.

The Earth’s average global temperatures have been rising over the past century and accelerating as more human produced carbon dioxide enters and lingers in the atmosphere, which is why the idea of “global warming hiatus” seemed baffling to some scientists. - More...
Tuesday PM - November 21, 2017

TOM PURCELL: Be Thankful if You Don't Take a Drumstick to the Noggin - "Thanksgiving used to be my favorite holiday of the year. Now I can't wait for it to be over."

"Your sentiments reflect the findings of a new working paper by M. Keith Chen of UCLA and Ryne Rohla of Washington State University. In these turbulent times, more 'politically divided' families are cutting their Thanksgiving celebrations short."

"You got that right. God only knows what may happen this year when my progressive liberal Democrat nieces discover they're sitting next to a cousin or uncle who is a conservative Republican."

"That's regrettable and just not necessary. Our country is far from perfect, but Thanksgiving is about coming together to give thanks for our considerable bounty."

"My uncle's girlfriend doesn't see it that way. Last year, when she found out I supported Trump's efforts to dismantle Obama's many economy-killing executive orders, she hit me in the noggin with a drumstick!"

"Ouch. That's no good."

"Yeah, well, this year I'm terrified she might find out I favor Republican efforts to simplify and lower taxes, as I think it is the best way to unshackle the economy, create more jobs and benefit all Americans!"

"Well, maybe you should try to explain your point of view to her in a calm, objective manner, at the same time you try to understand her point of view. I'll bet you and she agree on more things than either of you are aware."

"Why would you think that?"

"Ken Stern, former CEO of National Public Radio, recently published a book about the divide between red and blue America. It's called 'Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right.' He wrote about it in the New York Post."

"Go on."

"Well, Stern, who lives and works in an overwhelmingly Democrat area, spent a year with red-state voters where they live, work and pray. 'I embedded myself with the other side, standing in pit row at a NASCAR race, hanging out at Tea Party meetings and sitting in on Steve Bannon's radio show,' Stern writes." - More...
Tuesday PM - November 21, 2017