Hi all,

Scott Ray and I may disagree somewhat about anthropogenic global warming, but I'm 100% on his side over the need to maintain a truly scientific--that is, open--mindset? in these dire times.

I feel myself being driven currently into the position of heretic in the environmental community because I see the extinction crisis as both more dire and more addressable than the climate crisis.? By all means, take that carbon-belching flight to visit a newly created sanctuary for an endangered Antpitta or Guan.?

It's ironic that one of the drivers of extinction now is the expansion of biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) into tropical forests. A recent BirdLife International article reports on the destruction of a Kenyan Important Bird Area (of coastal dune forest), to be replaced by a Jatrapha plantation made economically viable by Europe's biofuel mandates.? Biofuel subsidies & mandates were ushered into being with the acquiesence or even eager support of environmental groups and reducing carbon was one of their supposed (now disproven) benefits.???

We have since seen cap and trade similarly reduced to a simple pro-environment or con-environment debate when it is also more fraught with complexity and scientific issues than it may seem at the outset.

Please, let's let ideas and disagreements flow.

Thanks all,


Ed Newbold? back from the New Mexico bootheel where the Sage Thrashers are way up, the Juncos are way down, we dipped on Montezumas, the Golden Eagles are coming back, and I got the first ever? Baird's Sparrow for my folks-in-law's Ranch.

Seattle










Indeed,