• 12 States Challenge Bush on Global Warming
  
• Enviros Sue Army Corps to Stop Mountaintop Mining
  
• EPA Asked to Internally Investigate New Source Review Revisions
  
• EPA Biologist Resigns in Protest of Wetlands Study
  
• Jaguar Photographed in Southern Arizona
  
• A New View of Inter Ocean Currents
  
• Satellite Data Confirms Arctic Warming
  
• Scientists Detailing Biology's Tree of Life
  

12 States Challenge Bush on Global Warming

In response to a petition calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate CO2 emissions from cars and trucks, the Bush administration announced in August that without clear legal authority from Congress, the EPA is prohibited from taking any regulatory action to address climate change.

The plaintiffs contend that the statute is flexible enough to allow CO2 regulations and say the Bush administration must start taking climate change seriously.

"The vacuum of leadership on global warming by the Bush administration is a betrayal of the best interests of the American people," said New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. "This failure to act is harming public health and the environment and will continue to do so for generations to come. With no leadership from Washington, our only recourse is to turn to the courts for relief."

Eleven states - Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington - filed a legal challenge today. American Samoa and the District of Columbia signed on to the state's petition.

California is filing separately, as are two cites - New York and Baltimore. More than a dozen environmental groups are also challenging the administration's decision.

These four appeals could be consolidated into one case.

"This is a watershed event in the fight to stop global warming," said Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly.

The legal challenges underscore how climate change has emerged as a polarizing issue for the United States.

Bush is loathe to enforce mandatory C02 reductions on American industries and has repeatedly questioned the science that points to the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate.

Many scientists believe that there is ample evidence manmade greenhouse gas emissions are causing the climate to warm, and if left unchecked, could cause rising sea levels, the melting of the polar icecaps, and a host of other environmental problems that could have far reaching impacts.

The administration has instead called for more study of climate change and has pushed forward with a voluntary program to cut the nation's greenhouse gas intensity - the ratio of emissions to economic output - by 18 percent.

Critics believe this approach will do little to reduce emissions and note that the United Nations released data this year that found U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rose some 14 percent from 1990 to 2000.

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are expected to increase another 12 percent by 2012.

"The Bush administration can try to ignore the science behind the causes of global warming, but it can not hide from the law," said Joseph Mendelson, Legal Director for the International Center for Technology Assessment, one of the environmental groups involved in the legal challenge. "If it takes lawsuit after lawsuit to force the Bush Administration to accept its responsibilities and pursue good public policy on this issue, then that's what it will face."

Some in Congress are trying to put more pressure on Bush to address greenhouse gas emissions.

A bipartisan bill by Senators John McCain of Arizona and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to force U.S. industries and manufacturers to cut greenhouse gas emissions is expected to be taken up by the U.S. Senate this in the next few weeks.

The legislation would use a cap and trade program to cut emissions of C02 down to 2000 levels by 2010.

Enviros Sue Army Corps to Stop Mountaintop Mining

"Burying hundreds of miles of streams with mining waste was not what Congress had in mind when it passed the Clean Water Act 30 years ago," said Daniel Rosenberg, an attorney with Natural Resources Defense Council, which filed the suit along with Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and Coal River Mountain Watch

The groups allege that the Army Corps permits that permit mountaintop mining violate the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The suit was filed the suit in federal district court in Huntington, West Virginia.

Mountaintop coal mining - labeled mountaintop removal coal mining by environmentalists - is a form of strip mining in which mining companies blast hundreds of feet off the tops of mountains to easily access coal deposits. The debris and waste rubble is bulldozed into surrounding valleys and there is increasing concern about the impact it has on nearby streams.

The groups allege that the Army Corps of Engineers' general permit authorizing the valley fills, called Nationwide Permit 21, violates the Clean Water Act by allowing environmental impacts that are not "minimal" as written in the law.

In addition, the groups charge that the Corps has violated NEPA by failing to complete a full analysis of the environmental impacts of the valley fills.

The groups have asked the court to declare Nationwide Permit 21 illegal, block any valley fills the Corps has already authorized, and prevent the agency from authorizing any new fills.

EPA Asked to Internally Investigate New Source Review Revisions

A letter requesting the investigation was sent Wednesday to EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley by Vermont Senators James Jeffords, an independent, and Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, along with Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman.

The trio cited a newly released report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) that shows Bush administration officials appear to have supplied misinformation to two Senate Committees during testimony on the administration's New Source Review rules, which many consider as the greatest weakening of the Clean Air Act in history.

The report says that administration officials were informed that their New Source Review announcements and proposed and final rules changes were going to blunt the federal government's capability to strongly enforce the Clean Air Act.

"This report illustrates clearly that the Bush administration knew that environmental rollbacks would hamper enforcement of the Clean Air Act yet they ignored these consequences and misled a Senate committee about them," Lieberman said.

The senators have honed in on a July 2002 hearing on New Source Review that included testimony from the EPA's Assistant Administrator for Air Jeffrey Holmstead, who told the committees that the EPA enforcement office had concluded the lawsuits against nine utilities for violations of the Clean Air Act would not be compromised by the administration's proposed changes to the law's New Source Review provision.

Another witness, a former EPA official, testified instead that Holmstead was advised otherwise.

"The list of smoking guns is getting even longer with this new GAO finding that Mr. Holmstead intentionally misled Senate committees last year and has continued to work to get industry polluters off the hook and out of court," said Leahy.

The EPA did not comment on the request, but an industry lobbyist said the GAO report demonstrates that rulemaking is an "iterative process" and criticized the call for an investigation.

"If an inspector general report were initiated every time that a former EPA official took issue with some element of a rulemaking, the agency would be mired in constant reviews," said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council. " Such paralysis through analysis is never in the best interest of environmental protection. "

EPA Biologist Resigns in Protest of Wetlands Study

The EPA's approval of the study gives developers credit for improving water quality by replacing natural wetlands with golf courses and other developments, PEER says.

"In the Bush administration's bizarre world of 'sound science,' wetlands cause pollution and there is no evidence of global warming," said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. "EPA's new position that wetlands pollute stands the Clean Water Act on its head and sends the all clear signal to developers that no project is out of bounds."

The report was financed by a group of local developers in Southwest Florida. It concludes that wetlands generate pollution and recommends that developers be allowed to avoid federal wetlands restrictions by allowing a few cattle to graze in the wetland so it can classified as "improved pasture."

The agency's acceptance of the report was too much for Bruce Boler, a former state water quality specialist to take - he resigned after three years with the EPA.

In his resignation statement, Boler cited the stance taken by the EPA Regional Administrator Jimmie Palmer that the agency "would not oppose state positions, so if a state had no water quality problems with a project then neither would EPA."

The state of Florida has already signed off on the controversial wetlands report.

"Ultimately, the politics in southwest Florida have proven to be stronger than the science," Boler wrote in his resignation letter.

Jaguar Photographed in Southern Arizona

The surveillance camera used to monitor potential jaguar travel corridors on the Arizona-Mexico border took the photograph on August 7, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported Wednesday.

Wildlife officials say the location where the photograph was taken will not be released in an effort to protect the cat.

The agency has used such surveillance cameras since May 1997 - the first Arizona jaguar photograph using a surveillance camera was taken in December 2001.

"This photograph is incredibly exciting," said Arizona Game and Fish biologist Bill Van Pelt, who specializes in big cats. "Because of the patterns of spots on the animal, we believe it is the same jaguar photographed in December 2001. We will continue to monitor the area and try to determine if the animal has established a territory or is a transient."

The closest known population of jaguars is 135 miles south, in Mexico's Sierra Madre Mountains.

More than 60 documented jaguar sightings have occurred in Arizona since 1900.

The third largest cat in the world, the jaguar was placed on the federal endangered species list in 1997.

The species once ranged from southern Argentina, up along the coasts of Central America and Mexico, and into the southwestern United States as far north as the Grand Canyon. This range is greatly reduced and fragmented - it is estimated that there are now only around 15,000 jaguars left in the wild.

Conservation is centering on the establishment of protected areas that may serve to reduce the decline of the jaguars natural habitat.

A group consisting of landowners, ranchers, citizen groups, scientists and state and federal agency representatives known as the Jaguar Conservation Team and Work Group was created in 1997 to guide jaguar conservation efforts in Arizona and New Mexico.

Members of the Jaguar Work Group, which is comprised of volunteers, are responsible for monitoring the 14 surveillance cameras along the Mexico border, which were purchased from grants awarded from the Wildlife Conservation Society.

"This group has been instrumental in efforts to conserve the jaguar, which will ultimately assist in the recovery process," says Sarah Rinkevich, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.

A New View of Inter Ocean Currents

The findings, published in today's issue of the journal "Nature" could help climate modelers form predictions of the intensity of the Asian monsoon or El Nino with greater accuracy and with more lead time than currently possible.

The study is the first to combine comprehensive temperature and velocity measurements of an ocean current known as the Indonesian throughflow (ITF) with regional wind data.

The ITF is a network of currents that carry tropical Pacific Ocean water into the Indian Ocean through the straits and passages of the Indonesian Archipelago.

It is unique among the world's inter ocean currents because it is the only one that exchanges tropical waters between two oceans.

All other ocean interchanges occur in the extreme northern or southern latitudes, where the water is already very cold.

This uniqueness is why many believe the ITF is important factor in governing the exchange of heat between the Indian and Pacific Oceans and, consequently, between the oceans and the atmosphere.

"The ocean may very well act as a pace maker to the El Nino and the Asian monsoon," said Arnold Gordon, the lead author on the study. "Which means we might one day be able to predict the intensity of the monsoon a year ahead of time by monitoring the Indonesian throughflow."

Previously, scientists thought most of the water moving between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean did so on or near the surface, where water temperatures hover around 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius).

For this study, the scientists used data from two long-term measuring stations moored in Indonesia's Makassar Strait, which funnels more than 90 percent of the ITF. They found that the bulk of the water passing through the strait, flowed well below the surface where it could not be warmed by the atmosphere and averaged about 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius).

"Before the heat transfer between the Pacific and Indian Oceans was essentially a guess," said Gordon. "Now we have data."

Satellite Data Confirms Arctic Warming

The Arctic warming study, which appears in the November 1 issue of the American Meteorological Society's "Journal of Climate," shows that compared to the 1980s, most of the Arctic warmed significantly over the last decade, with the biggest temperature increases occurring over North America.

"The new study is unique in that, previously, similar studies made use of data from very few points scattered in various parts of the Arctic region," said the study's author, Dr. Josefino Comiso, senior research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "These results show the large spatial variability in the trends that only satellite data can provide."

Comiso used surface temperatures taken from satellites between 1981 and 2001 in his study.

The result has direct connections to NASA funded studies conducted last year that found perennial, or year round, sea ice in the Arctic is declining at a rate of nine percent per decade and that in 2002 summer sea ice was at record low levels. Early results indicate this persisted in 2003.

"It appears that the summer 2003 - if it does not set a new record - will be very close to the levels of last year," said Mark C. Serreze, a scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder who completed the related NASA study on perennial sea ice trends. "In other words, we have not seen a recovery - we really see we are reinforcing that general downward trend."

Researchers have suspected loss of Arctic sea ice may be caused by changing atmospheric pressure patterns over the Arctic that move sea ice around, and by warming Arctic temperatures that result from greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere.

According to Comiso's study, when compared to longer term ground based surface temperature data, the rate of warming in the Arctic over the last 20 years is eight times the rate of warming over the last 100 years.

Warming trends like those found in these studies could greatly affect ocean processes, which, in turn, impact Arctic and global climate, said Michael Steele, senior oceanographer at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Liquid water absorbs the Sun's energy rather than reflecting it into the atmosphere the way ice does - as the oceans warm and ice thins, more solar energy is absorbed by the water, creating positive feedbacks that lead to further melting.

Such dynamics can change the temperature of ocean layers, impact ocean circulation and salinity, change marine habitats, and widen shipping lanes, Steele said.

Scientists Detailing Biology's Tree of Life

The researchers say such a rigorous historical framework is an essential backdrop - not just for evolutionary biology - but also for efforts as diverse as the search for new drugs and agricultural agents, studies of emerging diseases, and evaluating issues of species conservation and ecosystem restoration.

"The overall goal is that we want to know who is related to whom," said Sean Carroll, a University of Wisconsin at Madison professor of genetics and the senior author of the "Nature" paper. "The challenge has been to decipher the true tree from those that have changed as data have been added and reanalyzed over time."

In efforts to arrive at a reliable tree of life, scientists since the 1980s have used genes to infer the evolutionary history for various organisms. By comparing one or a few genes common to related animals or plants, and looking at differences in the selected genes, scientists began to map out family trees for different plants, animals and microbes.

The problem with that approach, according to the new study, is that trees constructed on single genes often seem to lack reliability. Different genes give different answers so that one gene from a group of organisms depicts one tree, while a different gene from the same organisms will paint an entirely different evolutionary picture.

Using new genomic sequences from eight yeast species, the group was able to assess the reliability of trees constructed using more than 100 genes.

The scientists explain that genes alone are biased, but together their shared history overrides each genes' unique bias and provides a strong picture of evolution.

The implications of the study are exciting, and provide encouraging news for the future of understanding the tree of life, Carroll said.

As the data sets get larger, the influence of variation caused by natural selection becomes small enough that true historical relationships can be worked out.

"The problem is that molecules do not all change in the same way," he said. "Now, with whole genomes being deciphered at a rapid clip, long standing questions about the relationships between various animals and plants appear to be within our reach."