Considerettes

Can planting trees, in some cases, lower water reserves? Apparently so.

Planting trees can create deserts, lower water tables and drain rivers, rather than filling them, claims a new report supported by the UK government.

The findings - which may come as heresy to tree-lovers and most environmentalists - is an emerging new consensus among forest and water professionals.

“Common but misguided views about water management,” says the report, are resulting in the waste of tens of millions of pounds every year across the world. Forests planted with the intention of trapping moisture are instead depleting reservoirs and drying out soils.

The report summarises studies commissioned over the past four years by the Forestry Research Programme, funded by the UK government’s Department for International Development.

This is not, by any means, a blanket statement. However, the study shows that the opposite is also not a blanket statement. The idea that planting forests always conserves the water resources is flat-out false. Here are some examples:

The studies found that in the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, when fields were converted to forests to provide more water for reservoirs, they actually reduced water yields from the land, by 16% and 26% respectively.

In South Africa, the spread of foreign pine and eucalyptus trees across the country has cut river flow by an estimated 3%. The country is currently employing some 40,000 people to uproot many foreign trees. And it taxes plantation owners for their hydrological damage.

High in the mountains of Costa Rica, researchers found that forests do not harvest moisture from the clouds, as previously supposed. Chopping them down in many places barely alters rainfall, according to Sampurno Bruijnzeel from the Free University of Amsterdam, who contributed to the project.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution; more trees is not always the best way to go. But environmentalists, I bet, will not let go of that thought easily.

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Back here I noted that adult stem cells keep looking better and better, being virtually as good as embryonic stem cells, not to mention their proven track record. Well, looks like Bill Frist hasn’t read that study.

Breaking with President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Friday he now supports legislation to remove some of the administration’s limitations on embryonic stem cell research.

Frist, an abortion opponent who just last month said he did not support expanding federal financing of research on embryos, said his decision was consistent with both his experience as a physician and his anti-abortion stance.

The crux of his argument appears to be this:

The Tennessee Republican, who has been said to be eyeing a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, said only stem cells from embryos that “would otherwise be discarded,” not implanted in a woman or frozen indefinitely, should be considered for research.

First of all, never say “never”. As I pointed out in a diary on Redstate.org (in the first set of comments), saying “never” amounts to predicting the future, which is not a power I typically want to give to the federal government. Ask these 21 children who were adopted as embryos.

Second, this amounts to human experimentation. If you don’t consider these embryos truly “human”, then what are they? They certainly aren’t fish eggs. And further, if they weren’t human, the scientists wouldn’t want them.

I don’t see how someone who is against abortion can be for human experimentation on embryos. The whole “would otherwise be discarded” argument is morally equivalent to a woman getting an abortion because she didn’t want to have a baby right now.

“I give huge moral significance to the human embryo, it is nascent human life, what that means is as we advance science, we treat that embryo with dignity, with respect,” Frist said.

And performing experiments on them is…what, exactly?

Frist said additional stem cells should be used, so long as there was a careful process of informed consent in which the parents had decided that the embryos should be discarded, not adopted or frozen.

Ah, so “aborting” them is OK as long as the proper government paperwork is fill out. Gotcha. Now that’s “respect”.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out. Comments welcome.)

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Tony Blair calls this a “step of unparalleled magnitude”. I think he’s right, if it sticks.

The IRA has formally ordered an end to its armed campaign and says it will pursue exclusively peaceful means.

In a long-awaited statement, the republican organisation said it would follow a democratic path ending more than 30 years of violence.

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said the move was a “courageous and confident initiative” and that the moment must be seized.

This is fantastic news for the people of the UK. Some, as the article notes, are still skeptical, which is perfectly understandable. Nonetheless, an official IRA statement calling for all IRA units to “dump arms” and pursue “purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means” is a giant leap in the right direction.

Democracy’s busting out all over.

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If the bombings in Madrid and London were really because of Spain’s and England’s support of the war in Iraq, why then are Algerian diplomats being killed by Al Qaeda? Via Release the Hounds comes word that being a diplomat is enough to get you on their hit list. Ric reminds readers that Algeria did not support the invasion of Iraq.

This goes to further prove James Taranto’s assertion (scroll down to “The Road to Baghdad”) that the Iraq war would be a pretext, not a provocation, for later acts of terror. Each act of terror simply references the most recent pretext. The goal is the same, it’s just that the reason for the bombing du jour supposedly changes.

What it all comes down to is that you >gasp< can’t trust terrorists! It’s not just that they strike at targets of opportunity, they also use excuses of opportunity as well. Asking “why do they hate us?” is an exercise in futility. They can always come up with one more thing they hate if you keep appeasing them over and over. The Twin Towers are gone supposedly in response to our military presence in Saudi Arabia. If the anti-war left had their way, we’d be out of there, but do you really think bin Laden would have said, “OK, fine, then we won’t go after you any more”? (Hint: No.)

Being against a war, but acknowledging a government duly elected by the people is enough to get you killed by Islamic extremists. You can’t reason with people like that, and you can’t get into their heads and figure out how to calm them down. Until there’s a caliphate (run by them, of course), you won’t get a break.

Unless and until you defeat them.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out. Comments welcome.)

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That was Ted Kennedy then:

“We have to respect that any nominee to the Supreme Court would have to defer any comments on any matters, which are either before the court or very likely to be before the court,” Kennedy said during a 1967 press conference. “This has been a procedure which has been followed in the past and is one which I think is based upon sound legal precedent.”

This is now:

In his June 20, floor speech responding to President Bush’s nomination of Roberts to the Supreme Court, Kennedy argued that senators “must not fail in our duty to the American people to responsibly examine Judge Roberts’ legal views.”

Kennedy listed a number of issues, including workers’ rights, health care and environmental regulations, that he considers important.

“Each of these issues, and many others, [have] been addressed by the Supreme Court in recent years,” Kennedy said. “In many of these cases, the Court was narrowly divided, and these issues are likely to be the subject of future Court decisions in the years to come.”

Click here for the full story and video to back it up.

The double standard is alive and well.

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The Kossacks at the blog “Daily Kos” have never been a big fan of Hillary Clinton’s feigns to the center. The mainstream media is now finding that out.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s call for an ideological cease-fire in the Democratic Party drew an angry reaction yesterday from liberal bloggers and others on the left, who accused her of siding with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) in a long-running dispute over the future of the party.

Long a revered figure by many in the party’s liberal wing, Clinton (D-N.Y.) unexpectedly found herself under attack after calling Monday for a cease-fire among the party’s quarreling factions and for agreeing to assume the leadership of a DLC-sponsored initiative aimed at developing a more positive policy agenda for the party.

…

The most pointed critique of Clinton came in one of the most influential blogs on the left, Daily Kos out of Berkeley, Calif., which called Clinton’s speech “truly disappointing” and said she should not provide cover for an organization that often has instigated conflict within the party.

“If she wanted to give a speech to a centrist organization truly interested in bringing the various factions of the party together, she could’ve worked with NDN,” the blog said in a reference to the New Democrat Network, with which Daily Kos’s Markos Moulitsas is associated. “Instead, she plans on working with the DLC to come up with some common party message yadda yadda yadda. Well, that effort is dead on arrival. The DLC is not a credible vehicle for such an effort. Period.”

The post by Markos himself is here.

You’d think with the huge following of Kos visitors (over 500,000 per day), Moveon.org, Howard Dean fans, and a press that is increasingly and openly antagonistic against the right (and the Christian Right in particular), this would result in more Democrats being voted in, not less. Instead it’s beginning to appear that this group of hard-leftists who keep pushing further left are simply more vocal, as opposed to more numerous. And indeed the more vocal they are, the more they alienate the folks that the DLC is trying to bring in. Is this a winning strategy? (Hint: No.)

As to Hillary’s participation in this, I think it’s just another bit of posturing, but if it gets her barbs from the far left it may help a potential presidential candidacy. (See here for my thoughts on that, and here for what “Stonette” Thecla has to say about her.) Could actually be a good political move to get herself in a situation like this. But, as I’ve noted before, if it’s a political move without the actual move, then it’s just pure politics. So far, not much substance. We’ll see.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out. Comments welcome.)

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Whew.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Discovery and seven astronauts blasted into orbit Tuesday on America’s first manned space shot since the 2003 Columbia disaster, ending a painful, 2 1/2-year shutdown devoted to making the shuttle less risky and NASA more safety-conscious.

At stake were not only the lives of the astronauts, but also America’s pride in its technological prowess, the fate of the U.S. space program and the future of space exploration itself.

“Our long wait may be over. So on behalf of the many millions of people who believe so deeply in what we do, good luck, Godspeed _ and have a little fun up there,” launch director Mike Leinbach told the astronauts just before liftoff.

My daughter, who has dreams of being a pioneer to Mars, likes the idea that the first Shuttle mission after this long wait, and thus a rather sensitive and scrutinized mission, is a woman. So do I.

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You may have heard that John Roberts, Bush’s Supreme Court nominee was once a member of the Federalist Society. What does that tell us? Well, according to David Bernstein at The Volokh Conspiracy, not much.

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Anita Hill, who once tried to keep Clarence Thomas off the Supreme Court bench, weighs in on Bush’s nominee, John Roberts. While reading this article, keep in mind these key points:

Point A: The work “bork” is a verb these days because of litmus tests on issues that the Democrats made Robert Bork take. His ability to judge cases based on the Constitution (i.e. his potential job description) was less important as his views on specific issues.
Point B: Anita Hill herself tried to sink Clarence Thomas’ confirmation based on some of his earlier behavior. His ability to judge cases based on the Constitution was less important than his demeanor in years gone by.
Point C: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, had she been held to the same standard as Bork by the Republicans, would never have made it out of committee. She sailed through the Senate confirmation vote.

With that, here are some excerpts from Anita Hill’s article:

In his nomination of John G. Roberts for the Supreme Court, President George W. Bush has put forward a highly regarded lawyer who is reportedly a quite likable individual. Roberts’ supporters and independent analysts cite a lifetime of achievement as the reason he should be confirmed.

Roberts worked in both President Ronald Reagan’s and the first President George Bush’s administrations before going into private practice. Republicans are counting on the fact that Democrats will have a hard time voting against someone with government and private practice experience who is widely recognized within the Beltway as one of the country’s top appellate attorneys. As Peter Canellos of the Boston Globe wrote, Roberts’ career reads like “a 1950s Boys’ Life primer on how to prepare for the Supreme Court.”

But was John Roberts chosen because he’s the best choice for the court or because he may easily be confirmed? And why not choose a woman to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court? Or use this as an opportunity to nominate the first Latino to the court?

We don’t know what the decision-making process was, but Ms. Hill seems to suggest that national origin or gender should trump experience and ability. This is much like Point A’s issue litmus tests or Point B’s bygone bad behavior being overriding concerns vs. job performance. But I think there’s larger reason Roberts may have been nominated, and I’ll get to that next.

Not surprisingly, the answer to these questions has to do with the politics of confirmability. One thing is certain: If nominees are selected based on the very narrow and elite credentials that brought us John Roberts, a wide range of equally qualified, more diverse candidates will never even be considered.

Here’s the crux of the matter; the “politics of confirmability”. The irony here is that Anita Hill is decrying the very thing she participated in. Why does George W. Bush have to nominate someone who’s “confirmable”? Because the Democrats brought the “politics of confirmability” to us in Points A & B above. And while one might be tempted to paint both parties with an overly broad brush and say they all do it, please refer to Point C.

Ms. Hill goes on to complain about the groups that Roberts belonged to and the gender makeup of the Rehnquist clerks he was a part of. She’s worried that those he’s associated with weren’t diverse enough. She speaks very little about his qualifications, and indeed says she she hopes the Judiciary Committee will determine if he indeed does have the right experience. She doesn’t know for sure, but she’s more worried about his background in diversity, as though judging constitutional questions is based on who you’ve known. I don’t recall the being a criteria for the Supreme Court. What concerns Ms. Hill further is that if Roberts’ background becomes the standard by which Presidents have to choose their nominees, we’ll never get another Sandra Day O’Connor, or perhaps a future woman or Latino that doesn’t fit the picture. Whether or not that is the case, I’ll note again that it is Democrats and Ms. Hill who set this standard of “confirmability”. See Points A and B. Again.

With O’Connor on the bench, the Supreme Court was the most diverse in its history. If confirmability through the Roberts “primer” becomes the rule, it is not hard to imagine a return to an all-white-male Supreme Court.

Again, diversity trumps all. I don’t recall any blacks on the court when Brown v Board of Education was argued and ruled on (Thurgood Marshall’s tenure was 14 years away), and yet they ruled in favor of those of a race other than their own. One doesn’t have to be of the same race or gender to rule honestly and fairly with regards to that race or gender, but arguing for Supreme Court diversity suggests a rather dim view of people, and assumes that such honesty and fairness is difficult if not impossible. That’s a rather cynical view.

The nomination process may have become so politicized that the only secure nomination is someone who is an ultimate Washington insider, liked by both sides. If so, it misses a chance to reflect the experiences of the vast majority of Americans. Moreover, a gold standard for judicial selection based on exclusivity appears to contradict the values of ever-expanding opportunities we espouse.

Roberts’ professional endeavors represent very limited legal experiences that do not appear to be balanced by other life experiences. I hope the Judiciary Committee members will try to determine whether Roberts has the breadth of experience that will help him understand the law beyond what is sometimes a very narrow text.

I don’t know enough about John G. Roberts’ positions on any issues to pass judgment on his suitability for the court. The concerns I have today are directed more to the process and standards for the nomination. For if confirmability politics continue to control the Supreme Court selection process, it will likely change the face of the court for the foreseeable future.

Ms. Hill, you have yourself and the Democrat Party you allied yourself with to thank for such an outcome. If diversity is really your goal, you’ll only get it by de-politicizing the process. I’d like it de-politicized as well, but because I want nominees that best fit the job, not some gender or racial profile. As the points above note, it’s the Democrats you have to convince on this point.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out and Blogger News Network. Comments welcome.)

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The Blogger News Network has moved. It’s switched hosts, and even has a new URL: http://www.bloggernews.net/ Stop by the new digs.

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As mentioned below, vacation is taking precedence now. See y’all next week.

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Remember the evolutionists claim that given enough monkeys banging on enough typewriters sooner or later one of them would type out the complete works of Shakespeare? Via Dean Esmay comes the word that someone’s putting that to the test.

So far a simply extraordinary number of virtual monkeys (5.67088e+47 as I write this–the population continuously expands) have typed 1 letter per second each for 5.01633e+48 virtual years, and haven’t managed to get much past a couple of dozen letters of any given play.

Click here to join the effort (and become a monkey). (Isn’t that de-evolution?) Fun little experiment, but seriously folks, which has a higher probability; typing out the text of all of Shakespeare’s plays by chance, or lining up the atoms, molecules, proteins and such of a single cell and get the right amount of jolt to begin life by chance?

Mathematical note: A billion years expressed in the scientific notation you see above is 1.0e+09 (1 times 10 to the ninth–a “1″ with 9 zeroes after it). The number of virtual years noted above is over 1 times 10 to the 48th, i.e. a “1″ with 48 zeroes after it. Yes, the comparison between random chemicals mixing and monkeys typing may be a comparison of apples and…bananas, but it does help show how astonishingly remote such a chance is.

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With friends like these, who need Yemenis.

Oh, wait…she’s talking about Yemenis.

(Hat tip to Dean, who’s trying to help Jane get the word out.)

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With all the classified information leaked out in the Wilson/Niger/Yellowcake/Plame/Rove issue, it’s obvious somebody should be going to jail for it. The more we know about Rove’s call to Matt Cooper, however, the more we realize that Rove did not break any laws.

But what about the boatloads of classified information that Wilson leaked about his trip to Niger? AJ Strata pulls together the evidence of leaked information from Wilson to the New York Times.

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One of the best summation of questions (with or without current answers) in the whole Plame affair can be found here at Redstate.org. Even the liberal posters agree that it’s a fair summation, even if they take issue with some of the conclusions. Worth a trip over there. The discussion following it is long, but there’s a lot of good information in there as well, including a pointer to this blog post dissecting today’s New York Times article on the subject. The Times virtually exonerates Rove in the matter.

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