Inside the Beltway

Circa 1859

Were those alarming predictions of mass extinctions caused by future global warming — splashed across the front pages of many newspapers (not ours) last week — yet another salvo in the ideological battle to frighten the public into believing in catastrophic climate change?

Yes, Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Iain Murray says of the startling predictions first reported by the journal Nature.

“Not only are the conclusions outlandish, but the theory upon which the entire article rests has been itself thoroughly disproved,” charges Mr. Murray. “The authors used a theory from 1859 that the absolute area of animal habitat controls the number of possible species, despite ample proof in recent years that that simply isn’t true.

“Without that connection, any predictions about actual extinction rates are hogwash.”

The Nature article suggests as many as 1 million species could go extinct by 2050 because of higher Earth temperatures. As CEI notes, only 12,000 species of approximately 14 million living on Earth today are considered threatened with extinction.

Love the pork

More than three months into fiscal 2004 and Congress has yet to finish the appropriations process.

Which isn’t to say senators and congressmen haven’t found time to pile on the pork.

The House passed the 1,448-page, $820 billion Consolidated Appropriations Act for fiscal 2004 on Dec. 8, but the Senate isn’t expected to take action on the bill until it reconvenes Jan. 20.

Meanwhile, Citizens Against Government Waste says the bill is continuously “stuffed” with parochial projects.

Some recent examples: $750,000 added by the Senate for Love Inc., a Fairbanks, Alaska, social service facility; $300,000 added by the House for street furniture and facade improvements for the city of Luverne, Ala.; and $75,000 added by the House for construction of a social hall for the Japanese Community Center in East San Gabriel Valley, Calif.

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