The new Trump, same as the old Trump

He came, he talked...and talked...and talked some more, and after Texas GOP Congressman and certifiable wing-nut Louis Gohmert had said 'great job' 

so Trump could return to the White House for more feedback and a pat on the back from President Bannon, what we heard was just another campaign speech loaded with Trump's boilerplate stupid wall-building, immigrant-fear baiting, Muslim-fear mongering, old-timey GOP regulation-unwinding and Paul Ryan-inspired healthcare-double talking, where access to care is conflated with actual coverage.

Tomorrow, we'll be back to the Trump that's familiar - - the inept, tweeting, media-bashing Russian tool. 

Give WI Sup. Ct. Justice the Legal Laughingstock Award & retire it

Wisconsin's far rightwing, often-conflicted and corporately-beholden conservative majority had been correctly given a failing grade for ethics - details, here - - but we learned today via the indispensable Wisconsin Democracy Campaign that Associate Justice Michael Gableman has lowered the bar, broken it into splinters and tossed them into the judicial dumpster:

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who penned the court opinion that ended the controversial John Doe probe of Scott Walker’s campaign activities, is one of the featured speakers at a Republican Party fundraiser – along with the head of a shadowy rightwing group that the John Doe prosecutor was reportedly looking into. That group, Wisconsin Club for Growth, spent more than half a million dollars to get Gableman elected in 2008.

Gableman, who is among the court’s 5-2 conservative majority and faces reelection next year to a second 10-year term on the court, is scheduled to appear March 11 at the Barron County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner in Rice Lake.

In addition to Gableman, the director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, Eric O’Keefe, will also be a keynote speaker at the event.

County pension payout troubles linked to Walker's tenure

I note in this strong Journal Sentinel story about more screw-ups in the operation of the Milwaukee County pension system that some of the problems extends back to Scott Walker's 2001-2010 tenure as County Executive. I wonder what his defense will be to these paragraphs:

Disclosure of the 2014 report to the IRS, and the recent six-figure overpayment to a surviving spouse, come less than three months after the county had to pay out $11 million to make up for pension underpayments to nearly 1,300 county retirees that started 15 years ago. After adjusting the payments, the county expects to distribute an additional $6 million to those retirees over their projected life expectancy.

Those mistakes were made between 2001 to 2008 after county pension office workers used the wrong mortality table to calculate the payments.

The payments to those retirees were part of an IRS-approved voluntary correction plan that grew out of a 2007 report submitted to the IRS.

Of course, this is not the first time that Walker was known to be knee-deep in the County's pension quicksand, and the Journal Sentinel's Dave Umhoefer won a Pulitzer Prize for disclosing it.

Trumps waters' protection rollback overlooks old WI wisdom

How arrogant, how uninformed, how dangerous are Donald Trump and his clutch of ideologues now with their grubby, greedy, selfish, oil-stained and pollution-smeared hands on the levers of power?

Consider that he is set to rollback efforts to protect wetlands from short-sighted fillings, but...

Even in Wisconsin where  right-wing environmental destroyer Scott Walker began his first term with an order and subsequent bill to allow a donor-developer to sidestep a permit review and fill a wetland, even on the webpages of his 'chamber of commerce mentality'-driven Department of Natural Resources where climate science and education materials have been scrubbed or delete the agency is still quoting a wise, 1966 State Supreme Court ruling that noted when affirming the people's rights to state waters that all the waters are interconnected, and when the chain is broken, the resource is gone forever:

 "A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body may be eaten away until it may no longer exist.  Our navigable waters are a precious natural heritage, once gone, they disappear forever," wrote the Wisconsin State Supreme Court justices in their opinion resolving Hixon v. PSC.(2)

The impaired Little Plover River, near big ag's big well pumping

Trump could damage WI exports to Mexico

When will we hear the first big bold meek peep from Donald Trump's lunch date Scott Walker and or new border wall believer Paul Ryan in defense of Wisconsin beef, pork, corn, soybean and other exporters to Mexico 

who are likely to lose jobs and business to retaliatory actions if Trump keeps talking about or actually gets Ryan's freedom Congress to implement Trump's threatened punitive tariffs on Mexican-made-or-assembled products the US imports from south of the border.

Whitewater march Saturday: "No" to oil pipeline expansion, route

March Against Pipeline Expansion!

Saturday, March 4, 2017

On Saturday, March 4, 2017, Wisconsin Youth Network and allies concerned about the future of the environment, environmental responsibility, and justice will be marching in Whitewater, Wisconsin, a town in the path of a proposed pipeline expansion and the site of a related pumping station.

Wisconsin is already bisected by four existing pipelines, and now Enbridge, a $42 billion Canadian company, has announced plans to its shareholders to construct Line 66, a pipeline that would run parallel to its existing Line 61. Together, these two pipelines would carry 2 MILLION barrels of tar sands oil per day from Superior, Wisconsin, diagonally through the heart of the state, crossing many vital waterways.

Join us in Whitewater on March 4 to express opposition to Enbridge’s plan to expand at the expense of the people and the natural environment!

WHAT: March Against Pipeline Expansion
WHEN: Saturday, March 4, 2017 (gathering starts at 2:00 pm and marching begins by 2:30 pm)WHERE: Whitewater, WI **
WHAT TO BRING: Weather-appropriate clothing, signs (please avoid picket-style signs on wooden posts), and positive energy!
FACEBOOK EVENT: Here
RSVP: Here

** The march will begin near the fountain on the campus mall in front of the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater University Center. It will end at the Cravath Lakefront for speakers and a rally. The march route is approximately one mile one way. For those traveling from off campus, there is visitor parking available nearby: by the visitor’s center and by the campus library. Campus parking is free in all lots on weekends.

Enbridge had more than 800 spills from 1999 to 2010, roughly one spill every five days. It is with this history in mind that we also call on Enbridge to decommission Line 5, twin pipelines passing under the environmentally vulnerable Straits of Mackinac that connect Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. The Great Lakes are one of our most precious resources, containing 21% of the world’s surface fresh water. Their ecological health shouldn’t rely on pipelines that a company with a notoriously poor environmental and safety record built more than 60 years ago.

Here are our demands:

1. A public commitment by Enbridge not to construct any new tar sands oil infrastructure in Wisconsin, including Line 66;
2. The decommissioning of Line 5 as soon as possible; and
3. Improved pipeline management, oversight, and technology from Enbridge in order to safely operate and eventually decommission existing pipelines as the nation and the world transition to clean fuel sources.

For more background on Enbridge’s pipeline system in Wisconsin and beyond, see our Tar Sands Campaign webpage.

WI DNR magazine subscriptions spike, customers dissed

The Wisconsin State Journal is reporting a spike in orders for the DNR's venerable, 100% subscriber-supported magazine

which Gov. Walker plans to budgetarily scrap as he continues his ideological war on science and the provision of public information: 

The nearly 1,400 subscription orders came in during an eight-day period after publication of articles in the Wisconsin State Journal and other newspapers about Walker's plan to cut the magazine. 

At the same time, environmental reporter James Rowen used his blog to urge his readers to subscribe.

Initially, the governor's office explained the budget proposal by saying the state shouldn't duplicate privately owned periodicals, but a spokesman hasn't given examples. But three private, Wisconsin-based publishers last week told the State Journal they don't compete with the DNR magazine and didn't ask Walker to eliminate it.

Props to the Capital Times for the push.

The agency has deleted from its online order form the two-and-three option, and claims it eliminated those options after Walker released his budget on February 8, but I emailed my order for a three-year subscription on February 14 as I said that day on my Facebook page  - - "I just subscribed" - - and my FB feed is filled with comments after the 8th from people signing up for two-and-three subscriptions.

Also, there are multiple comments on my blog item of February 14 appealing for subscriptions from people who said they just signed up for two or three years.

The Walker/DNR attitude is filled with contradictions and contradicts the agency's pledge to be consumer-attentive, as Secretary Stepp had declared not long ago:

Like any healthy organization striving to remain relevant and responsive to its customers...We are a customer service agency... 

Clarke, Walker running incarceration hellholes in Wisconsin

Recent stories about Milwaukee County's absentee, talk radio lauded and Trump-travelin' Sheriff David Clarke,

and his like-minded, right-wing mentor and Trump-travelin' WI GOP Gov. Scott Walker, have exposed patterns of neglect, disregard and outright hellhole-ish incarceration in the formerly civil State of Wisconsin:

*  There's litigation Clarke can't slip out of:

Clarke Can’t Delay Class Action Suit
Pregnant women shackled in county jail, could be as many as 300 in suit.

*  Some of the stories are grisly:

Federal lawsuit filed after newborn baby died at Milwaukee County Jail; 1 of 4 deaths in 6 months

*  There's a pattern to it:

Death in County Jail ruled homicide; cause of death was dehydration 

*  And Walker has let inhumane conditions fester for years at state youth corrections facilities after he moved them and their heavily minority and urban southern Wisconsin inmate population to faraway, rural Northern Wisconsin:

Walker's office heard multiple warnings about Lincoln Hills

*  Some of the details are grisly:

Lincoln Hills youth had toes amputated after run-in with staff

*  The retired former Milwaukee County chief juvenile court judge recently weighed in via Letter to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editor: 

As the past presiding judge of the Milwaukee County Children’s Court, I have been following the news reports about the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Juvenile Correctional Facilities with increasing horror, for lack of a better word....The movement from Wales to the northern parts of Wisconsin has been a disaster by anyone’s standards... 

* And speaking of Copper Lake, the female prison unit, there's that familiar, grisly pattern:

Girl gravely injured in suicide attempt at Copper Lake prison

*  And this humanitarian crisis, as I've called it has been known to Walker since at least 2012, as the Racine Journal Times reported: 

Retired Racine judge calls out Walker on Lincoln Hills incident

Retired Racine County Circuit Court Judge Richard Kreul was caught off guard when he heard a 2012 letter he sent to Gov. Scott Walker about a sexual assault at Lincoln Hills had surfaced.

That surprise turned to outrage after learning the governor never saw the letter and that years passed until investigations into problems at the Irma youth prison began.

“I guess the expression would be, ‘They swept it under the rug,’” Kreul said this week in a phone interview from his home in Texas, where he moved after retirement.

These officials are treating people in their custody as disposable.

That is wrong. 

Trump's 'reforms' - more weapons, pollution & middle-class taxes, too?

We're told that White House resident anarchist Steve Bannon and others are crafting Trump's speech to Congress tomorrow; leaks by administration sources indicate novel ways to boost spending on the world's most powerful military Trump is going to make even bigger: cut programs that keep the air and water clean and help feed hungry families.
 
And since the speech is said also to include tax 'reforms,' listen closely to see if Trump claims that middle-class tax rates will be lowered enough to offset the possible loss of deductions of property and state and local taxes from taxable federal income.

So here's a scenario - - the value of your property might fall because the coal mine or feedlot up stream will be freer to pollute the water and you won't be able to deduct taxes to maintain keep ocal and state anti-pollution efforts.

Unless Step Two is the Walker/Cathy StepP DNR demolition strategy gone national - - fewer inspections, fewer enforcement actions, more business-drafted permits, more contaminants in the water.

As you can see from this chart, people living in high-tax Wisconsin and other midwestern states could easily end up, despite rhetoric and promises, with higher federal tax bills - - and even more state and local taxes as federal programs and responsibilities are shoved downhill - - unless the cut in federal rates compensated for the loss of the deductions.

Anybody wanna bet that this is just another sop to big business and billionaires at the expense of everyday Americans? 

And a way to screw blue states like New York?

And a way to throw out more distractions so no one is focused anymore on Trump's tax documentation, his unethical hotel lease and other grifting off the taxpayers, the Russian election hack, his team's connections to Team Putin., etc.

Walker ignores State gov't, geography, hydrology, physics, etc.

[Updated from 2/23/17] 

Want an idea for what's coming to your rivers, streams, groundwater and clean air when Donald's Trump's anti-environmental EPA administrator Scott Pruitt turns the agency into a subsidiary of the oil and gas interests he let run the State of Oklahoma, records show?

Look to Wisconsin, the new state-level laboratory of corporate, special-interest control.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Right-wing GOP Gov. and frequent flyer Scott Walker flew off to a big conservative convention in DC on February 23, and in his boiler-plate endorsement of states rights displayed a surprising ignorance of what amounts to routine high school science as well as some very recent Wisconsin state government history.

...Walker called for giving more power to the states, saying the federal government should not be responsible for anything beyond the military, Medicare and Social Security. 

“I think just about everything else is done better by the states,” he said. 

For example, environmental regulations should be handled by states, not the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Walker said. That was an idea Walker first floated in 2015 during his short-lived bid for the presidency.

Set aside for a moment the Civil War, Federal currency, federal highway dollars Walker desperately needs to fix his over-spent road 'budget,' the US Postal Service, the instantaneous, electronic movement of capital,  etc. and just focus on his belief that environmental regulations should be handled by the state.

*  Walker has so deeply cut staff and mission at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources that the agency doesn't even follow its own pollution enforcement rules.

Wisconsin’s water quality regulators failed to follow their own policies on enforcement against polluters more than 94 percent of the time over the last decade, the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau said in a report released Friday...

In pointing out that the DNR didn’t follow its own enforcement policies, the audit appears to contradict previous DNR statements defending dwindling enforcement action in recent years by saying the agency was working hard to obtain voluntary compliance from polluters through informal negotiations.

*  Walker also might want to review other basic rules of physics and hydrology, because one state's rivers or air pollution can seep or fall into another state.  Did Walker forget this incident at one of Wisconsin's very passively-'regulated' frac sand mines a few years ago?

A spill at a sand mining facility in Wisconsin has dumped an unknown amount of sand and other sediment into the St. Croix River and wetlands near the Minnesota border, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources confirmed Thursday. 

*  And it's been known for years that wind carries air pollution across borders, which is why we have national standards now under assault by Donald Trump, Walker and others obeisant to the fossil fuel industry designed to minimize air pollution effects like these: 

A white paper in advance of [a 2017] study said ozone concentrations in the United States are highest along coastlines. For Lake Michigan, scientists noted research dating to 1976 shows cooler lake air keeps urban emissions close to the shoreline and can be pushed north from other states by prevailing warm winds in summer. 

In Sheboygan, the modeling by the consortium suggests that less than 10% of ozone comes from Wisconsin sources, while Illinois and Indiana and commercial shipping contribute two to three times the amount of pollutants that form ozone in Sheboygan.

These patterns were noted as far back as 1995, as the Racine Journal Times reported at the time: 

This summer saw mostly winds blowing to the northeast, and communities along Michigan's western shoreline saw higher peak ozone averages. Pollution from the Chicago and Milwaukee areas also contributed to Michigan's higher ozone levels, [officials] said.

How would having 50 sets of clean air and water rules and procedures in 50 states deal with these realities? Quick answer: there would be a crazy-quilt of intentional inconsistency, chaos, compliance costs - - and more pollution.

All of which is fine with the Walkers and Trumps and their mutual friend, the oil-and-gas captive Scott Pruitt who is now 'running 'the US EPA:

We just saw the Walker, just-let-it-slide approach, here:

Wisconsin’s water quality regulators failed to follow their own policies on enforcement against polluters more than 94 percent of the time over the last decade, the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau said in a report released Friday.

And in 2016:  Financial penalties for violations of Wisconsin environmental laws fell sharply in 2015 to their lowest level in at least a decade.

Data released by a conservation organization show forfeitures paid by individuals and companies for violating state law totaled $306,834 last year.

That's down 78% from nearly $1.4 million paid out in 2014. It's also the lowest amount paid out for violations dating back to at least 2006, according to data...

According to data from the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, there were no financial penalties in 2015 that involved confined animal feeding operations, which are large-scale farms also known as CAFOs that have come under fire from environmentalists.

There were also no forfeitures in categories covering hazardous waste and public water supplies, according to the group.

And in 2015:

The Walker administration is spelling out its case against a federal proposal to cut air pollution from coal-burning power plants, and reduce the impact of climate change. The incoming chairwoman of the Public Service Commission took the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plan to task at a forum in Milwaukee. 

And in 2014:

Gov. Scott Walker has signed a bill that would give wastewater plants, paper mills and food processors up to 20 years to comply with the state’s phosphorus limits.

Walker doesn't know or care that the air and the water is all connected - - which is why rain washes manure into residential wells, or why Green Bay fed by polluted rivers and streams has a large dead zone - - or that dirty air moves back and forth across the Great Lakes, and a successful national attack on acid rain moving West to east is just one of many examples of progress he'd just as soon give back.

The water is ours. The water is ours.

But Walker and his special interest business and ag donors and allies in the Legislature are coming for it and have the State Supreme Court in their pocket.

...there are greedy corporations and their self-interested, thoughtless politicians who carry their water and team up to disregard the "water is life" truth - - corporations and their servants eager to grab more than their fair share of a finite supply of water and even pollute what they don't withdraw or leave behind if they rig the system in their favor.

Big Ag even put their demands for control of state groundwater into a hand-delivered letter to state legislators. The bold-facing is in the original:

...we cannot accept any legislation that would create new, stifling regulations or establish regulatory uncertainty as to how DNR and the state will approach new well applications moving forward. 

Meanwhile, props to the advocates willing to make the fight.

Wisconsin DNR Sued Over High-Capacity Well Approvals

And to the truth-tellers, like Wisconsin Democracy Campaign:

Walker Donors Got DNR Well Permits

November 4, 2016

Two permits for controversial high-capacity wells that were issued by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and challenged last month by an environmental group belong to generous donors to Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Clean Wisconsin filed nine lawsuits against the DNR that claimed the agency is violating its duty under the Wisconsin Constitution to manage and protect the state’s rivers, lakes, and streams by failing to consider the cumulative impact that high-capacity wells have on surface and groundwater when it approves high-capacity well permits.

 

America's Crybaby takes ball, goes home

Can dish it out, but can't take it. Sad.

Trump to skip White House correspondents’ dinner

 

Walker still grasping after a job

What was on the menu, other than a starter word salad, an appetizer of flattery refreshed throughout the meal, and the entree platter of Meatloaf Christie and Crow a la Mitt avec les frogs legs?

President Trump is having lunch on Saturday with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Florida Gov. Rick Scott, two prominent Republicans who backed his campaign.

 

UW-M expert & others tracked spring climate change for decade

A day before Wisconsin officials cancelled a world-class cross-country skiing festival because of snow-free warm temperatures, and just weeks after other Wisconsin officials had scrubbed climate change materials from state websites because they claimed the reality of climate change was still being debated, the US Geological Survey, (USGS), with the assistance of a UW-Milwaukee expert, had coincidentally noted on Thursday an early spring in many states was further evidence of a decade's worth of changed climate reality:

On Thursday, the USGS shared a new analysis just released by the USA-National Phenology Network, which the agency helps to fund, showing that an early spring has already swept through the Southeast and is continuing to work its way across the country. As the agency points out, the new analysis reaffirms a fact scientists have known for at least a decade now — that “climate change is variably advancing the onset of spring across the United States.”

The analysis relies on a special “spring index,” which defines the start of spring as the point when temperatures allow for certain early-season events in plants, such as the emergence of leaves and blooms.  

The index was created using data that has been collected for a citizen science project over the past few decades...Since the 1950s, volunteers have been collecting information about the leafing and blooming of certain plants, such as lilacs and honeysuckle, Weltzin said. 

More recently, climatologist Mark Schwartz of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee used this information to develop an algorithm that can be used with national temperature data to determine where and when “spring” has arrived across the country.  

For the record, experts have been sounding the alarm about climate change and a warming climate since at least 1988:

Exactly 20 years ago, on June 23, 1988, James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies testified before a Senate committee that he could state with "99 percent confidence" that a recent, persistent rise in global temperature was occurring, and had long been expected. That landmark statement, and the dawn of the global warming discussion, was covered by Andy Revkin, then a DISCOVER senior editor and now an environmental reporter for The New York Times.

The award-winning Revkin now writes for Pro Publica.

How long we will hear from the USGS on climate change is what's debatable.

The USGS is a science arm of the US Department of Interior. Climate change denier Donald Trump has nominated a Montana congressman and climate change waffler to serve as Interior Department Secretary. His confirmation vote is pending.

WI GOP hypocrites finally endorse a local control issue

Right-wing WI GOP power misers Gov. Scott Walker and sidekick AG Brad Schimel

have been using their authoritarian, one-party rule to wipe local communities' priorities and procedures - - 'local controls,' if you will - -  off the books wherever they can.

This power grab includes ending long-standing contracting with unions and public employees, slashing wage rates on construction projects, enacting restrictive limits on early voting hours, easing environmental oversight of polluters, rolling back mining rules and protections - - all disregarding local citizen and governments' decision-making.

But, hey look: Brad Schimel spotted an opportunity to look the local control hero by supporting local school boards in setting transgender bathroom policy - - because its a way to cozy up to GOP 'strongman' Donald Trump, and even better, to take another kick at LGBTQ rights, a powerless constituency - - already stressed transgender kids - - and Schimel's frequent target, Barack Obama.

Hence this spectacularly and hypocritically inconsistent mouthful:

[Schimel] believes the issue is best handled locally where voters have "the most direct impact" on policies.

As noted above, a politicized, principle-free one-off. Schimel and Walker are statist power accumulators, with no true regard for local controls.

Wisconsin Congressman grovels before Trump

Talk about a Profile in Cowardice, as Wisconsin Congressman and former fiscal conservative Paul Ryan - - 

- - rewards Trump at the site of his $20 billion southern border wall political boondoggle with a 100% craven photo op/political downpayment on future Trump sharpie signatures on Ryan's must-have tax breaks for the rich funded with cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security which save everyday Americans' lives.

Media must fight Trump 1st Amendment stomp

Media should boycott Donald Trump

events and ignore his tweets while focusing on why Trump is censoring them: 

The Russian hack, Trump's tax returns, Priebus' interference with the FBI, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt's collusion with oil and gas interests, Education Secretary Devos' conflicts with private schools, Trump's illegal DC hotel lease, his unconstitutional, just-announced, 10-year exclusive China marketing deal, his sons' taxpayer-paid business travel expenses, and the Bannon Danger. 

Team Trump has to be shown that the the White House press room belongs to the people, and the First Amendment belongs to the media who practice it and the public it protects, and not to Presidents-cum-dictators and their unprincipled, sycophantic foot soldiers.

It's not supposed to be warm in the Feb. Arctic

Hat tip, Andy Revkin and @ClimateCentral:

Andy RevkinVerified account‏@Revkin  Feb 10

Surreal Arctic weirdness continues: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/winter-extreme-heat-arctic-21141 … via @ClimateCentral

Abnormally warm air is expected to reach the North Pole by Thursday.
Credit: Climate Reanalyzer

Ski event nixed in too-warm, climate change denying WI

Right-wing GOP Gov. and climate-change denying Scott Walker sees annual, world-class cross-country skiing event canceled for lack of snow. 

Days of unseasonably warm temperatures and rain forced the cancellation of the American Birkebeiner, the world's largest cross-country ski race, officials announced Friday.

It's an annual, multi-race, $20 million boon to the local economy, with 11,000 skiers and 40,000 spectators.

Let's see if Walker's science scrubbing PR types or local GOP US Rep. and fossil fuel-friend/clean air enemy Sean Duffy can spin it as a welcome early beach day.
 

Will WI DNR also kill its magazine online archive?

Scott Walker is waging war on clean and water in Wisconsin. 

And it's directed by his anti-science, anti-public information "chamber of commerce mentality" DNR managers who have pursued an ideological pattern of climate science web page deletion and scrubbing.

So should Walker's currently-proposed budget successfully kill the DNR's 100% subscriber-supported magazine in 2018 - - its 100th year of publication - 

- it would only be 'logical" for these ideologues to also delete the magazine's online archive and content search site on the agency's website to keep the forbidden public information away from inquiring minds.

So make use of it now, here.

And definitely go here:

• Subscribe
• Give a Gift
• Next Issue

WI DNR climate change censors continue deleting

Along with the agency's Great Lakes climate science web page and earlier global warning material scrubbing, Scott Walker's anti-science Department of Natural Resources "chamber of commerce mentality" top management - -  

- - has also deleted several climate change and science web pages from the children's education resource program known as EEK!, including a teachers' activity guide and K-12 information, here.

Those links bring up the dreaded "Page Not Found - - the Web page that you are looking for is no longer on the server. Please check the page location. If you had this page bookmarked, please remove the bookmark from your browser."

Some of this has been reported earlier and Sacha Ericaceae through Facebook called it to my attention in January, so with this post I want to to catch up on the matter now.

Still on the DNR website, however - - so you might want to save this post and all the useful links - - is this information-rich page about tree planting as a climate change antidote - - full text below.

Most of the links are external to the DNR, but information distribution about climate change can still be performed unwittingly by this agency - - like this Canadian educational program about climate change for children - - even as it scrubs pages and will lose its popular magazine provided for 99 years and enjoyed now by tens of thousands of satisfied customers if Scott Walker gets his way.

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Youth and school planting projects

Example of free seedlings available from the state nursery; 3-year old white spruce

Take action! Motivate kids to plant trees as a classroom or community project.

• Free seedlings for all Wisconsin fourth graders
• Free seedlings for forestry promotions or educational events [PDF]
• Seedlings for youth groups, FFA, 4-H, vocational agriculture students

Climate change lesson plans

Motivate students! Bring climate change concepts and activities into your classroom.

• Fourth grade lesson plan from LEAF [PDF]  (For fourth graders – LEAF)
• Lesson plans for teens [exit DNR]  (For teens – National Wildlife Federation)
• Climate change activities and lessons [exit DNR]  (For multiple ages – Canadian Forestry Association)
• Polar bear lesson plans from Polar Bear International [exit DNR]  
• A National Wildlife Federation powerpoint [exit DNR] discussing tips for talking to students about global warming and polar bears, as well as the Arctic Educator's Guide (Arctic Educator’s Guide – National Wildlife Federation)

Download or link to our flyer! [PDF]

Climate change activities

Reduce your carbon footprint!

• Climate Change through Tree Planting [PDF]  (fourth grade) 
• Planting Trees Activity Booklet [exit DNR]  (ages 9 and up)
• Climate change activity guide  (grades 7-12)
• Schoolyard Habitats (U.S. Fish and Wildlife) [exit DNR]: (All ages) 
• Community Action Projects GreenWorks! (Project Learning Tree) [exit DNR]

Climate change information

Be informed! Learn what’s happening with climate change.

Youngsters help plant street trees in Sparta.

• Climate Change Awareness Toolkit [exit DNR]
• How trees fight climate change [exit DNR]
• Wisconsin's historical climate trends (1950 - 2006) and future projections (1980 - 2055) [exit DNR]
• How to plant trees to conserve energy [exit DNR]
• A PowerPoint presentation on global warming [exit DNR]
• How climate change could affect Wisconsin's forests [Video]

Carbon calculators

Calculate your impact! Carbon sequestration is the process by which atmospheric carbon dioxide is absorbed by trees through photosynthesis and stored as carbon in biomass (branches, foliage, roots) and soils.

• National Tree Benefit Calculator [exit DNR]: Discover the benefits of individual trees around your home and in your community 
• Household Emissions Calculator [exit DNR] and kids' calculator [exit DNR]: What is your family's impact?