Carson City, Nev.—C.J. Hadley, RANGE magazine publisher/editor and honcho of the RANGEfire brand is suspending editorial work on RANGEfire for the moment. “Too much happening too quickly for the resources available,” Hadley says. In the meantime, check the RANGE website at www.rangemagazine.com and our Facebook page for RANGE news.
Keep that RANGEfire bookmark—we’ll be back sooner rather than later!
—Steve Thompson, RANGEfire editor
The latest crack in the fantasy world of man-made global warming showed up in the actions of parents in the Omaha, Neb., Millard Public School system, when parents demanded that “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming” be yanked from school curricula because of “a major factual error,” according to a report in the Omaha World-Herald’s online edition. The error was in a “graphic about rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels.”
In addition, the story relates how a video accompanying the book, narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, has been axed, because, a committee set up to review the situation reported, it was “without merit.”
The error in the book will reportedly be corrected in subsequent editions, according to the publisher, and the review committee recommended that teachers “make students aware of both sides of the global warming theory.”—Steve Thompson
Writing in the May 14 online edition of Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, science correspondent Richard Alleyne reports that Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “said there was a need to use information which was not from peer-reviewed scientific journals, because in some places that was the only research that had been done.”
The IPCC has suffered considerable damage to its reputation as a result of the discovery that it had included the claim from a World Wildlife Fund publication that the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035. This erroneous story was not peer-reviewed, and Pachauri admitted it should not have been included in its official report on climate change. But Allenye quotes Pachauri as saying, “Somehow it just missed everybody’s attention.”
Except that it didn’t miss the attention of careful readers, who brought the “human failure,” as Parchauri called it, to the forefront in the battle over whether human activity is causing global warming. Responding to criticism of the IPCC’s sloppiness (if it was sloppiness) in using such non-scientific “evidence” in its attempts to force massive changes in the developed world’s liberties and lifestyles, Alleyne writes that Pachauri said, “Although there was this error, there’s a whole lot of valid information and assessment on glaciers which we can only ignore at our own peril and the peril of generations yet to come.”
Pachauri evidently did not elaborate on what he and the IPCC think constitutes “valid information.”—Steve Thompson
Although the revelations behind “Climategate” have reduced public confidence in the pronouncements that the “science” behind “man-made global warming” is “settled,” many scientists do not agree. That’s one reason the Heartland Institute is hosting the fourth of its conferences on climate change from May 16-18 in Chicago.
The theme of this year’s conference is “Reconsidering the Science and Economics” behind the global-warming scares and scenarios. According to the event’s website, the conference’s purpose is “to build momentum and public awareness of the global warming ‘realism’ movement, a network of scientists, economists, policy-makers, and concerned citizens who believe sound science and economics, rather than exaggeration and hype, ought to determine what actions, if any, are taken to address the problem of climate change.”
The conference will be held at the Chicago Marriott Magnificent Mile Hotel, 540 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, and will feature more than 70 speakers. Further details are available on the event’s website.—Steve Thompson
Late on the afternoon of April 30, Pinal County, Ariz., Sheriff’s Deputy Louie Puroll called to his dispatcher that he was taking fire from suspected drug smugglers he was tracking northbound through the desert some 140 miles away from the Arizona-Mexico border. Puroll was wounded in the exchange of gunfire from a suspected ambusher armed with a Russian-made AK-47 assault rifle. Helicopters and other backup teams were immediately sent to the area, known as part of the “Chihuahua Corridor” which runs from the Mexican border into Arizona, and is a notorious drug-smuggling and people-smuggling pathway into the United States.
Writing in the Arizona Republic in a report filed May 5, Dennis Wagner noted that, though initially Dep. Puroll had been praised as heroic in his defense—in which he fired 30 rounds from his M16 and 16 rounds from his .40-caliber Glock automatic pistol—attempts were made to suggest that Puroll had staged the incident. In response, as Wagner writes, “The sheriff released recordings of Puroll’s calls, as well as a detailed account of the ambush, to counter what he said was growing speculation that the event had been staged. An article on the website of the Phoenix New Times on Tuesday compared Puroll to a Phoenix police officer who staged a gunbattle 10 years ago.” In response, Wagner adds, the sheriff said that, “There’s no doubt in my mind that this happened,” though “he conceded that early reports about the incident were confusing and sometimes incorrect.”
The day after the incident, Associated Press reporter Bob Christie quoted Lt. Tamatha Villar, of the Pinal County Sheriff’s Department, as saying, “We’ve had increasing concerns in this area about being outmanned and outgunned, and unfortunately this evening, this is coming true.”—Steve Thompson
WASHINGTON D.C., April 19—Today, according to a press release from House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), he and National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee Ranking Member Rob Bishop (R-Utah) along with 16 other members of Congress, “sent a letter to the chief of the U.S. Forest Service opposing the views expressed in a letter from House Democrats requesting that the Forest Service manage Recommended Wilderness Areas as de facto Wilderness Areas. This would be a gross misinterpretation of the law, circumvent Congressional authority and lock up tens of millions of acres of public land.
Citing Wilderness Act statute, the Republicans wrote, “The law is crystal clear that the power to designate wilderness rests squarely and solely with the Congress. It is a baseless, twisted reading of the law to suggest that Congress intended to allow an agency to administratively declare an area as recommended for wilderness designation and then to manage that area exactly as if Congress had taken action to make such a designation.”
The letter goes on to note that, “Designating an area as wilderness imposes the most restrictive land-use policies that can be taken. As you well know, it places severe limitations on public access to public lands, prohibits motorized and mechanized recreation, severely restricts job-creating and energy-producing activities, responsible timber management, and decreases capabilities to respond to fires and emergencies as roads, trails, structures and other facilities are banned.”—Steve Thompson
