Category: RT Newswire

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 10, 2008
10:56 AM

CONTACT: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337

US Offshore Leasing Premised on Future of Cheap Oil
Planning Assumes $30 a Barrel Oil to Minimize Potential Environmental Impacts

WASHINGTON, DC – April 10 – With prices surging past $112 for a barrel of oil, the federal government is basing its Arctic offshore drilling plans on the assumption that oil will cost only $30 a barrel and not rise beyond $46 a barrel by 2012, according to agency records posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). These vast underestimates were based on old forecasts which the Bush administration refused to update for fear of slowing leases sales in the Arctic Outer Continental Shelf.

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Bush Administration Again Favors Timber and Oil Industry By Proposing Weakened National Forest Management Regulations
New regulations would severely weaken wildlife, water quality and other environmental protections

WASHINGTON, DC – April 10 – Today the Bush administration released its latest forest planning regulations, which are as flawed as the ones overturned by a federal court last year. The Forest Service’s new planning rules contain almost all of the same problems as the agency’s 2005 regulations that were struck down less than a year ago in a legal victory for conservation organizations. Both the 2005 regulatory changes and these latest changes seek to turn the strict forest-planning standards established in 1982 by the Reagan administration into virtually meaningless suggestions, making it easier for industry to log, mine, and drill national forests with little to no regard for impacts on wildlife and the land.

“America’s national forests are the source of much of the country’s water supplies, wildlife and wide open spaces, and they should be managed for the overall public interest. That requires a balance between conserving and utilizing resources, not the single-minded pursuit of economic profit,” said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. “Today the Bush administration has unwisely come down on the side of industry by trotting out yet another version of national forest regulations written specifically for logging, mining and oil and gas industries.”

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Gannett News Service
Published: 04.10.2008

Expect a busier Atlantic hurricane season than initially believed.

Professor William Gray’s Colorado State University forecasting team published its updated 2008 predictions Wednesday, and the numbers are on the rise. The latest forecast calls for 15 named storms and eight hurricanes — four of them major hurricanes of Category 3 or stronger.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 until Nov. 30.

“To put it in perspective, a typical season has 10 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes,” said Phil Klotzbach, Gray’s research partner. “So we’re calling for about 160 percent of an average hurricane season this year.”
In early December, Gray and Klotzbach predicted a “somewhat above-average” Atlantic hurricane season, featuring 13 named storms and seven hurricanes, three of them major. They upped those numbers Wednesday.

Klotzbach devised a new computer statistical model after his team overestimated the last two hurricane seasons. The researchers will release an updated forecast June 3, the third day of the hurricane season.

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Analysis Shows American Forests Contain Enormous Carbon Reserves,
But Available Measuring Tools Reflect Gaps in Underlying Data

Report Highlights Importance of Protecting Existing Forests: Lower 48
States Alone Hold Carbon Reserves Equal to 20 Years of U.S. Greenhouse
Emissions.

For Immediate Release:
April 9, 2008
Contacts:        –Ann Ingerson, M.S., Economic Research Associate,
TWS: 802-586-9625
–Dr. Jerry F. Franklin, Professor, College of Forest Resources,
University of Washington
–Bob Perschel, Northeast Region Director, Forest Guild: 508-756-4625
–Chris Mehl, Communications Director, TWS: 406-581-4992

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A report released today by The Wilderness Society
emphasizes the enormous carbon reserves held by forests in the
contiguous states – roughly equivalent to more than 20 years of
current United States greenhouse gas emissions from industrial and
other sources.  Across the U.S., public and protected forests
generally store the most carbon.  The analysis also cautions that
existing carbon measurement tools have significant limitations due to
gaps in the underlying data: old growth forests, in particular, may
be undervalued.

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