Tuesday, 07 Feb 2006

To skiers and snowboarders, climate change is no distant abstraction -- it's already messing up their powdery playgrounds. To ski resort owners, it's more sinister still, threatening to melt them right out of business. Some in the industry are stepping up and working to reduce greenhouse gases. Others, not so much. Daniel Shaw surveys the ski scene for signs of green.

Singin' in the Rainforest

Deal will protect vast Great Bear Rainforest in Canada

We love the smell of vast tracts of protected rainforest in the morning. Smells like ... victory. Today in British Columbia, Canada, a coalition including the provincial government, Native groups, forest advocates, and timber companies is expected to announce an unprecedented agreement to protect the 15 million-acre Great Bear Rainforest -- fully a quarter of the world's remaining coastal temperate rainforest. Almost 5 million acres will be closed to logging, while 10 million will remain open to selective cutting in consultation with Native nations. The pact, which ends a 10-year battle, will help preserve one of the highest concentrations of grizzly bears in North America, unique subspecies of goshawks, coastal wolves, and other critters, and habitat for 20 percent of the world's wild salmon. And over $100 million may be raised from governments and foundations to seed ecotourism and other sustainable development. Cool.

Money for Nothin'

Bush's 2007 budget includes Arctic Refuge drilling, cuts EPA funding

Unsurprisingly, greens will find little to love in President Bush's proposed $2.77 trillion budget for fiscal year 2007. It calls for oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, estimating $7 billion in revenue by 2008 from leasing drilling rights -- nearly triple the $2.4 billion forecast in last year's budget (how'd that work out?). The U.S. EPA's allocation would decrease by 4 percent to about $7 billion, with cuts to many clean-water programs -- that would be the fourth annual decrease to EPA's budget in a row. $10.8 million would be slashed from clean-air and climate-change research, but grants to promote less-polluting off-road diesel engines would rise dramatically, from $7 million to $50 million. The budget includes an expected initiative to revivify nuclear power, via $250 million for research into the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. Sadly, the $10 million in funding for scrappy little environmental internet magazines again failed to pan out.

That'll Teach You to Put Pee in Frogs

Lethal frog fungus spread by pregnancy test, researchers suspect

Weird non sequitur of the day: A skin fungus that's killing off frogs worldwide may have been spread by a pregnancy test. Yeah, we got that same confused look. A few decades ago, African clawed frogs were used to detect pregnancy -- with surprising accuracy. The hopper would be injected with a woman's urine, and if she was preggers, the frog would spawn within a few hours. These foretelling froggies were exported all over the world, and may have taken with them the chytrid fungus, which has been found on all continents except Asia and Antarctica and is likely responsible for the extinction of about 75 harlequin frog species in South and Central America in the last 17 years. Thanks to global warming -- and what can't we thank global warming for these days? -- warmer tropical temperatures have provided a perfect climate for the fungus to spread.

Well, They Had to Chop Something

BLM suspends funding for forestry research that contradicts Bush policy

The Bureau of Land Management has abruptly suspended funding for a team of scientists who published findings undercutting a Bush administration timber policy. The Oregon State University researchers' report, published last month in the journal Science, suggested that forests scorched in southwest Oregon's 2002 Biscuit fire recovered more quickly if left alone to regenerate, rather than being logged and replanted. OSU administration says it has no doubts about the integrity of the research. The funding suspension is "totally without precedent as far as I can recollect," said University of Washington forest researcher Jerry Franklin. "It says, 'If we don't like what you're saying, we'll cut off your money.'" However, federal officials deny the action was political retaliation, saying the researchers violated some terms of the funding agreement. For instance, part B, subsection E4, where it says "don't effing cross us, punks."

Color Us Grateful

Do you work for Hewlett-Packard? Do you love Grist?

We're seeking Grist-loving Hewlett-Packard employees to help us get a new color printer via the company's employee giving program. If you could lend us a hand, drop a line to . Thanks!