About scrubbed DNR climate change page, Snopes says "true"

Happy to read that my blog posting - - and thanks also to Urban Milwaukee for reposting it - - has been validated by the fact-checking site Snopes.com. It's a simple window into what is happening in Wisconsin - - and especially at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, which Scott Walker intentionally redefined with a "chamber of commerce mentality," further diminished with science staffing cuts, and recently hinted at its breakup.

Climate Scrubbing

The Wisconsin DNR's web page was scrubbed of all uses of the word "climate" and altered to imply a lack of consensus about anthropogenic global warming in the scientific community.

Despite water law enforcement, compliance resistance, WI DNR asks...

[Update - - headline corrected. Sorry for coding errors.] 

You already know that GOP Gov. Scott Walker's "chamber of commerce mentality" Department of Natural Resources has failed to comply with Federal clean water obligations since 2011, and US monitors have just completed a review of DNR records after citizen complaints, presumably to encourage the Walker administration to follow through, and groundwater pollution near the state's expanding big dairy and animal feeding operations is rampant.

Yet DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp's agency 

emailed this today:

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

Do you have water quality data from Wisconsin’s lakes, streams, or rivers?

If so, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources would like to hear from you. 

Every two years, the DNR requests that citizens and interested groups submit their surface water data (biological, chemical and physical). Data meeting specified requirements will be evaluated, along with department data, to assess the quality of the state’s water resources and to pinpoint problem areas. In accordance with the Clean Water Act, DNR uses these assessments to prepare a statewide Integrated Water Quality Report (“Integrated Report”), which includes an updated list of impaired waters. 

Data will be accepted from the public for a one-month period from December 28 – January 31, 2017.

To enable DNR to efficiently process the data, a specific data submittal format is used. Data must be submitted electronically and the information must be submitted in specific Excel spreadsheet formats, along with quality assurance documentation. Data received as PDF files or in other hard copy formats will not be accepted.

Required elements include: 

• A Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP).
• Data in the specified Excel spreadsheet format (template provided). 
• Locational information in specified spreadsheet format (template provided). 
• General information about the submitter, entered in an online form. 

Templates and further instructions are available on the Surface Water Assessments 

webpage: http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/surfacewater/assessments.html.

Guidance on minimum data requirements and how WDNR evaluates the data is available in the 2018 Wisconsin Consolidated Assessment and Listing Methodology (WisCALM). This guidance is currently undergoing revisions for the 2018 reporting cycle, and the 2018 version may be accessed at:
http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/surfacewater/assessments.html. 

Scott Walker enjoying the poor. Again.

His video-enhanced Twitter feed propagandistically showed him serving Christmas dinner in Milwaukee:

Governor Walker ‏@GovWalker  19h
19 hours agoEnjoyed joining thousands in Milwaukee at Christmas with Salvation Army - great event my family has been volunteering at for last 15 years!

I wonder if the people Walker served knew he'd already:

* Cut the amount of food stamp aid for recipients and is trying to implement some recipients' mandatory drug-testing:

* Cut the lifetime eligibility for W-2 (welfare replacement) by 20% to four years:

* Frozen the minimum wage in Wisconsin at the poverty-enforcing rate of $7.25/hr.

* Inserted an across-the-board, under-publicized and punitive, flat $20-per month cut in state assistance to recipients - - we're talking nutrition you could measure in gallons of milk or pounds of chicken or noodles or soup - - so they'd get busy finding a job, as I wrote in 2011:

It's right there in the budget, on page 65, in the "Health and Human Services" section (really):  

"To further encourage W-2 recipients to recognize that the goal of W-2 is for participants to secure unsubsidized employment, reduce the monthly benefit check by $20." 

* And raised three taxes on low-income residents, despite his false claim to the contrary.

bb

WI blog calls for wolf protection action

New posting from Wolves of Douglas County Wisconsin continues its educational mission and again raises the alarm as Gov. Walker and some federal officials want to re-open grey wolf hunting in the Great Lakes region:

Planned wetlands loss echoes WI Supreme Ct. warning

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel yesterday outlined a massive sand mine proposal in western Wisconsin that could bring about the greatest Wisconsin wetlands loss to a single project in years, among other negative consequences.

I noted the sand mine and wetlands story in the context of several large environmentally-destruclive plans afoot in Wisconsin which both Scott Walker's "chamber of commerce mentality" Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and environmentally-hostile Trump administration could easily approve.

At times like these it's important to remember the guiding principle set down by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in an historic decision still cited on a not-scrubbed web page about Wisconsin residents' constitutional rights to clean, accessible water. I italicized the Court's language for emphasis:

Wisconsin's Public Trust Doctrine requires the state to intervene to protect public rights in the commercial or recreational use of navigable waters. The DNR, as the state agent charged with this responsibility, can do so through permitting requirements for water projects, through court action to stop nuisances in navigable waters, and through statutes authorizing local zoning ordinances that limit development along navigable waterways.

The court has ruled that DNR staff, when they review projects that could impact Wisconsin lakes and rivers, must consider the cumulative impacts of individual projects in their decisions.

"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)

Sources: (1) Quick, John. 1994. The Public Trust Doctrine in Wisconsin. Wisconsin Environmental Law Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1. (2) "Champions of the Public Trust, A History of Water Use in Wisconsin" study guide. 1995. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Bureau of Water Regulation and Zoning. Champions of the Public Trust [PDF].

Climate science deletion not Walkerites' 1st such scrubbing

In recent days I have pointed out two web pages put up at taxpayer expense by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources from which climate science and links to outside academic and government resources have been deleted without explanation.

These are not the only examples of obviously politicized changes to state-sponsored websites during Walker's time in office.

*  In 2013, I noted that Walker's scandal-plagued Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation deleted footage and information about the Trek bicycle company from a promotional online video touting homegrown Wisconsin business successes after former Trek company vice-president Mary Burke began campaigning against Walker in the governor's race.

At the time, Walker was the WEDC board chairman, having created the agency to replace the Department of Commerce,

*  And after Walker claimed that there had merely been a "drafting error," documents revealed by a lawsuit showed that Walker was involved in quiet state-budget writing to cut the heart from University of Wisconsin's historic, public mission statement known as "The Wisconsin Idea."

Records released Friday by Gov. Scott Walker’s office in response to a judge’s order make clear he sought controversial changes in 2015 to the University of Wisconsin System’s mission statement, known as the Wisconsin Idea. 

The office made public 82 pages of records late Friday after Dane County Judge Amy Smith said Walker’s office erroneously withheld 12 email exchanges and six of nine attachments from the public.

The Wisconsin State Journal reported on what had been deleted, including this line:

"Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.”

If that idea has served the UW and the people of Wisconsin for more than 100 years, then why not all of state government,? 

Or is the delete computer keyboard button our new State of Wisconsin symbol?

MI blog salutes Sixteenth Street Milwaukee staffer

Gary Wilson at the Great Lakes Echo blog posts a shout-out to Milwaukee's invaluable Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers, and to staffer Nadia Bogue. 

Pretty cool.

The Flint water crisis has taught us many lessons and one jumps off the page: the direct connection between a healthy environment and the health of the community.

That’s true in Milwaukee where Nadia Bogue says, “there’s a constant thread through everything connecting people to our water.”

Bogue is a Sustainable Development Manager at Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers and her work for six years has focused on connecting the community to theKinnickinnic River.

The “KK,” as the locals call it, flows through Milwaukee’s densely populated and urbanized watershed where it impacts a diverse and heavily Hispanic population.

“It is really important for us to communicate what the project is, what the goals are and how residents can be involved in decision making in both the short and the long term” Bogue says.  It’s a point that needs to be made in Spanish and English.

On climate, Jerry Brown, yes; Scott Walker, no

From The New York Times:

California, at Forefront of Climate Fight, Won’t Back Down to Trump

“California can make a significant contribution to advancing the cause of dealing with climate change, irrespective of what goes on in Washington,” Mr. Brown said in an interview.

From this blog:

Walker's repetitive disrespect for environment, climate change reality

I'd noted a few days ago that Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker's "chamber of commerce mentality" Department of Natural Resources had for at least the second time scrubbed climate change science and educational links to outside sources from a DNR web page about climate change...

What's happening in Wisconsin is an extension of the Walker dismissal of science throughout the DNR and a coordination at the agency, and by WI GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel with the incoming Trump administration's announced contempt through pronouncements and cabinet appointments for climate science to justify their elevation of fossil-fuel development and use over conservation.

Leading Trump racist pal won't quit Buffalo School Board

Normalizing hatred and racism when public officials go there has got to be confronted and squashed.

Surely there is a recall or other legal method of kicking this thug off the Buffalo School Board.

[Trump NY co-chair Carl] Paladino said that he hoped mad cow disease would kill President Obama and that first lady Michelle Obama should "return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla."

 

Public presentation on water by ex-DNR official Thursday evening

Some months ago I'd posted information which included strong words about the state of water quality in Wisconsin from former DNR manager Gordon Stevenson.

Glad to circulate the notice that Stevenson will be making a public presentation in Sturgeon Bay on Thursday evening. Check it out.

presents Gordon Stevenson Protect Our Water (POW!) invites you to join a conversation with Gordon Stevenson at: Door County Fire Co. 38 S 3rd Avenue Sturgeon Bay, WI   December 29th at 7:00 p.m.   Gordon will be speaking on northeast Wisconsin's vulnerable geology and the impacts of expanding industrial agriculture in northeast Wisconsin, and what that means for the landscape and citizens living there. He will specifically address the S&S Ag expansion in Door County, which will increase its facility's concentrated animal population to over 10,000. Gordon will bring us up to speed on how this will impact tax payers, Door County tourism, property values, roads and more. The CAFO* industry has arrived in Door County. Gordon is a 26 year veteran of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. His last assignment was serving as the Chief of Runoff Management until his retirement in January of 2011.  He had overall responsibility for voluntary, regulatory, agricultural and urban programs related to non-point source water pollution abatement in Wisconsin. His professional expertise includes watershed-based water resource protection and control of diffuse water pollution sources.  Gordon had been instrumental in development of policies and administrative codes for the State of Wisconsin involving both agricultural and urban non-point source water pollution. In particular, Gordon has been an architect of Wisconsin’s environmental programs that apply to Wisconsin’s extensive livestock industry.  He wrote and issued the first permits for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations in Wisconsin, developed technical guidance for abatement of agricultural pollutants in both surface water and groundwater and was the voice of the Department of Natural Resources to Wisconsin’s livestock producer community.

Walker's repetitive disrespect for environment, climate change reality

I'd noted a few days ago that Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker's "chamber of commerce mentality" Department of Natural Resources had for at least the second time scrubbed climate change science and educational links to outside sources from a DNR web page about climate change.

Note also that what the Walker-directed DNR is depriving the public of knowledge that has nothing to do with ideology or politics; the US EPA as long ago as the first term of GOP President George W. Bush was telling Great Lakes officials to plan for greater infrastructure spending because climate-change would induce flooding and other extreme weather events that would demand public sector action.

What's happening in Wisconsin is an extension of the Walker dismissal of science throughout the DNR and a coordination at the agency, and by WI GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel with the incoming Trump administration's announced contempt through pronouncements and cabinet appointments for climate science to justify their elevation of fossil-fuel development and use over conservation.

So expect the DNR to roll over when finishing its reviews of major, polluting-and-environmentally-destructive projects which include a giant dairy operation in the central sands area, a golf course on a Lake Michigan shoreline nature preserve which requires ceding some adjacent state park land south of Sheboygan to the Walker donor/project developer, and a precedent-setting 26,000 hog-feeding operation near pristine Lake Superior waters in Northwestern Wisconsin.

And now, we learn, the DNR is considering permitting a massive new sand mine which would create major wetland and woodland losses.

After having already rigged state law to allow more wetlands filling in a special-interest bill with statewide implications to a gigantic open-pit iron mine that was never dug, but whose owner quietly routed $700,000 to help Walker beat the recall election in 2012.

So are we surprised at the disappearance of environmentally-vital information from Wisconsin state websites?

Will we be surprised when major destruction of wetlands, dunes, forest, and the waters below and downstream, or the clean air above win a green-light from Walker and Trump-directed agencies?

Remember that Walker has held the EPA at bay for more than five years on water law compliance, and his administration is trying to figure out to further wriggle away from federal environmental law, so no wonder that Walker has asked Trump to free the state from federal oversight, no matter how crucial the issue.

If Walker gets his way, and Trump runs amok, scrubbed DNR pages about climate change will have been a harbinger of dirtier air, fouled water and damaged land.

Big win for the "chamber of commerce mentality," though don't those folks and their kids at some point breath the same air and drink the same water?

Facing potholes, deficits and intransigent Gov., WisDOT Secretary quits

Having overseen a dramatic decline in the condition of Wisconsin's roads, an endless funding crisis traceable to overspending on the road-building lobby's bloated program and looking forward to further unpopular options under GOP Gov. and phony fiscal conservative Scott Walker, Wisconsin Department of Transportation Secretary Mark Gottleib has announced his sudden resignation.

Effective January 6, 2017, it doesn't look like Gottleib even gave the standard two weeks notice. Maybe he made it under the wire. Either way, Gottleib, having served as WisDOT chief since day one of the Walker era, is outta there.

The new WisDOT Secretary and Walker/Assembly Speaker Robin Vos fall guy for either road tolls, higher vehicle fee and gas taxes, project delays or - - if Walker's highway funding 'plan' prevails - - cuts to or a wholesale transfer of funding from local plowing and street repairs accounts, school aids, home nursing care services, bus, biking and pedestrian programs and other popular and necessary basic public services - - will be Dave Ross, former Mayor of Superior.

You have to ask what Ross did to deserve this.
  

Megalomanic alert

Trump is the word, the light, the hope. The market maker!!

It's gotta be true, 'cuz I read it on The Twitter:

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump  4h4 hours ago

The world was gloomy before I won - there was no hope. Now the market is up nearly 10% and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars!

Cathy Stepp touts her record. Not cubicles

Part One of a long and useful Lakeland Times review (registration may be required) of issues at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has much to offer, including:

* The agency is gearing up for a 2017 wolf hunt:

"The hunt is on the books and as soon as there is a decision at the federal level we will be instituting a wolf hunt," said [Deputy DNR Secretary Kurt] Thiede. 

* DNR Secretary and Scott Walker "chamber of commerce mentality" chief implementer Cathy Stepp is something of a change agency, she tells the Lakeland Times:

"It's not like it's the old days in the DNR where these decisions were made in a building in Madison in a cubicle," she said.  

Thus reprising a key piece of her famously blogged and ranted trope which helped explain why Walker picked her for the job - - aversion to DNR staff and where they worked:

...people who go to work for the DNR's land, waste, and water bureaus tend to be anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes, karner blue butterflies, etc...This is in their nature; their make-up and DNA. So, since they're unelected bureaucrats who have only their cubicle walls to bounce ideas off of, they tend to come up with some pretty outrageous stuff that those of us in the real world have to contend with.

* And though she supported what was a failed effort through the last budget to remove the oversight functions of the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board, with all its avenues of public access into DNR activities, Stepp told the Lakeland Times she was the people's champion with a track record to prove it:

I would hope that people have seen enough of my track record over six years and how much work we have put into getting more public involvement - more transparency, more online chats, more surveys, more meaningful involvement and feedback from the public and back to the public," she said. 

This is not the first time she's sung her own praises.

And her self-addressed paean about transparency contradicts her agency's scrubbing from official websites long-established information and links about climate change.

What's worse than fake news?

If public service, experience and belief in equity are the yardsticks - - what's worse is a fake President 

and his fake appointees - - National Security Adviser, EPA administrator, HUD, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Commerce Secretary - -  and more than 100 judges and justices to come.

For starters.

More Walkerite/Orwellian censoring of WI DNR climate pages

[Updated from 12/22]

Climate change censors driven by science denial and obeisance to polluters these days at the GOP-managed, Scott Walker-redefined "chamber of commerce mentality" Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources are at it again.

Not content with having already stripped content and links from an agency webpage about climate change - - deletions I documented some years ago and which I have frequently referenced - - the ideologues intent on scrubbing science off these pages and sowing doubt and confusion about the consensus view of experts worldwide about climate change have edited, deleted and otherwise compressed to whitewash long-standing concepts and facts off a climate change page about the Great Lakes - - the same way, I will add, that Walker edited and watered-down the Wisconsin Idea, which has for decades had been the University system's historic mission statement.

[12/26 update. I suppose this page and subject will get the scrub/delete treatment, too]] 

It's a continuation of Walker's deliberate destruction of the DNR - - which we also learned today he is considering completely breaking apart to further hamstring and weaken public science, conservation and pollution enforcement while further playing to corporate donors and manipulating GOP base voters to help embed partisan Republican advancement and entrenchment by propagandizing that government - - and especially agencies like DNR which Walker has intentionally doomed - - does not work for them.

This is the text on the page freshly updated today:

The Great Lakes and a changing world 

As it has done throughout the centuries, the earth is going through a change. The reasons for this change at this particular time in the earth's long history are being debated and researched by academic entities outside the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. 

The effects of such a change are also being debated but whatever the causes and effects, the DNR's responsibility is to manage our state's natural resources through whatever event presents itself; flood, drought, tornadoes, ice/snow or severe heat. The DNR staff stands ready to adapt our management strategies in an effort to protect our lakes, waterways, plants, wildlife and people who depend on them.

That is but a fraction of what had been there until earlier today:

Gone are references to known "human activities" contributing to a warming planet, warming's contributions to changes in rainfall and snowfall patterns, extreme weather events, drought, species and economic losses as a result among other truths whitewashed off this official, taxpayer-financed website.

Chillingly, this entire line - - with its positive message and a call to action - - is now deleted:

The good news is that we can all work to slow climate change and lessen its effects.

As are multiple links to climate change resources, many specific to the Great Lakes materials - - despite the title of the page - - "The Great Lakes and a changing world."

Here are the full edits the DNR is sneaking through without fanfare to unsuspecting readers on that webpage - - changes caught by a webpage monitoring service.

[12/22 Update. In my haste to write the original post, I left out the obvious: that the changes remove the words "climate and "climate change."] 

Deletions are shown with a black line through them, words which were untouched remain in normal print, and the highlighted wording becomes part of the new text sandwiched together into what appears on what is a heavily-censored page, but without any way for the reader to spot the edits and altered meaning.

In short, the guts of this page are now gone, or sanitized.

This is Orwellian and propagandistic.

The Great Lakes and a changing world Earth´s climate As it has done throughout the centuries, the earth is changinggoing through a change. Human activities that increase heat–trapping ("green house") gases The reasons for this change at this particular time in the earth's long history are the main cause. Earth´s average temperature has increased 1.4 °F since 1850 being debated and researched by academic entities outside the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 1998Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Increasing temperatures have led to changes in rainfall patterns and snow and ice cover. These changes could have severe The effects on of such a change are also being debated but whatever the Great Lakes causes and effects, the plants, wildlife and people who depend on them. While no one can predict exactly what climate change will mean for DNR's responsibility is to manage our Great Lakesstate's natural resources through whatever event presents itself; flood, scientists agree that the following changes are likely if climate change patterns continue. Increased summer and winter temperatures will cause increased evaporationdrought, lower lake water levels and warmer watertornadoes, resulting in reduced habitat for cold water species and a loss of critical wetland areasice/snow or severe heat. Decreased winter ice cover will also contribute The DNR staff stands ready to increased evaporation and lower lake water levels which could have severe economic consequences for adapt our valuable shipping industrymanagement strategies in an effort to protect our lakes, lakeshore recreationwaterways, plants, wildlife and coastal businessespeople who depend on them. Changes in rain and snowfall patterns (including more frequent and severe storms) could change water flow in streams and rivers and increase stream bank erosion and runoff pollution. The good news is that we can all work to slow climate change and lessen its effects. To find out For more about climate change and how we can all help, please visit the following links. Wisconsin DNR Climate Change information Global Climate Change Climate Change Wildlife and Wildlands Toolkit [exit DNR] Climate change is mainly on the result research conducted by the University of rising CO 2 levels in Earth´s atmosphere. Check out the most current CO 2 level and what it means: Wisconsin-Madison CO 2 Now [exit DNR] General climate change information and actions we can all take to help (includes a special section for teachers and students): EPA Climate Change [exit DNR] Climate Change and the Great Lakes International Assn. for Great Lakes Research Climate Change The Nelson Institute [exit DNR] Union of Concerned Scientists [exit DNR] Water Sustainability and Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region [exit DNR] (Sea Grant materials) National Wildlife Federation – Great Lakes Report [PDF exit DNR]