Your One Minute Digest

By Don Rae

• Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado has been the lead sponsor on a federal ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines in two Congresses. Last week at a Denver Post forum on the gun control debate, asked how a ban on magazines holding more than 15 rounds would be effective in reducing gun violence, DeGette said: “I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available.” Wouldn’t it be appropriate for a proponent to know how magazines work before trying to legislate them?


• The Central Valley Business Times informs us that a new study by scientists at the University of California, Davis, says that changes in agricultural practices could reduce soil emissions of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide and the atmospheric pollutant nitric oxide. “Agriculture is the main source of nitrous oxide globally, so this study is a starting point to help us understand how to manage and control it,” says UC Davis professor of soil biogeochemistry William Horwath, whose lab conducted the study. Do the farmers in Yuba and Sutter Counties know anything about this study?
• California’s dairy industry is experiencing high feed costs and low milk prices. In recent years, an average of 100 dairies have closed annually. A dozen states are encouraging Golden State dairy farmers to abandon California. They claim cheaper farm land, lower taxes, fewer environmental regulations and higher prices for their milk. Dairy farmers complain that environmental standards in California are more burdensome than in other states and have been strengthened as environmentalists try to address water and air quality issues that arise from large-scale dairies.
California’s $8-billion dairy industry leads the country in milk production. California cows produced 41.5 billion pounds of milk.
• Former President George W. Bush hosts a few Wounded Warrior weekends at his ranch every year. Never see anything about it in the mainstream media.
• The Department of Homeland Security, as of November 2012, had over 263 million rounds of ammunition on hand. The agency said it is purchasing an additional $37 million of ammunition in this fiscal year. DHS claims that 1,000 rounds per firearm per year are necessary for training its least armed agents. According to recent calculations, this is well over three times the training needs for DHS personnel and over ten times what’s necessary for operational needs. Interestingly enough, local stores are hard-pressed to stock ammunition.
• Many California charities and recyclers have combined in opposition to SB 450, a bill by State Senator Cathleen Galgiani, sponsored by Goodwill Industries. S.B. 450, would make it next to impossible for charities and recyclers other than Goodwill to collect used clothing in collection bins. Among those supporting the bill are Richie Ross, a Democrat lobbyist whose daughter is a lobbyist for Goodwill
• Kevin Concannon, U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services, told the Huffington Post last year that food stamp fraud totals around $750 million each year.
• One of the Administration’s talking points regarding gun control claims that 40% of all gun transfers do not have background checks performed. This figure comes from a 20-year-old study which had 200 or so participants. The author states that he has no idea what the current rate is because his study was done more than 20 years ago and a plethora of gun laws have been passed since that time.
• The “Economist” has stood firm that carbon dioxide emissions from man-made sources are the chief cause of global warming. But in an editorial last week, it sounds less certain. Global warming predictions haven’t panned out as predicted in the past decade, but the “why” is a bit fuzzy, the magazine admits.

Even though greenhouse gas emissions have increased during the past 15 years with 100 billion tons of carbon having been added to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010, both air and ground temperatures during that time have remained virtually unchanged.

“The mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now,” The Economist said.

Buried deep in the highly technical piece, the magazine admits that evidence suggests something that global warming skeptics have long maintained: Natural variations in the earth’s climate likely play a bigger role than scientific models have said.

Published 4/17/13