From Legal Insurrection

Posted by Leslie Eastman 

“The Wildlife Service failed to rely on the best scientific and commercial data available when making its designation as required by law and therefore made inaccurate and arbitrary assumptions about the current and future status of the species.”

If Legal Insurrection were ever to have a mascot, it might have to be the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard.

Thanks to long-time reader Danelle, we have been following the creature’s endangered species status since 2011, when the Obama administration was poised to place it under protected status. It appeared to be part of a larger Obama administration effort to choke the nation’s oil production capabilities one permit at a time, as the lizard likes to make its home in lands rich in fossil fuels.

For over a year, that threat was hanging over the heads of the Texas petroleum industry before (in a rare display of sanity and reason) the US Fish and Wildlife Service denied the request.

This July, the Biden administration resurrected the request for such a listing and targeted the important oil-producing region of the Permian Basin with this action.

Now, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has just announced that his office is suing the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Biden administration officials for the declaration.

In his lawsuit, Paxton cited the successful voluntary efforts that have gone into successfully protecting this species in the region.

…Paxton said the defendants unlawfully classified the lizard as endangered in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

“The Wildlife Service failed to rely on the best scientific and commercial data available when making its designation as required by law and therefore made inaccurate and arbitrary assumptions about the current and future status of the species,” Paxton said in a statement.

“Further, the regulation classifying the dunes sagebrush lizard as endangered did not take into consideration the ongoing voluntary conservation efforts already in place at a local and state level. Because of this, the federal government’s action would unduly undermine vital economic development in the Permian Basin, subjecting Texas industries and private landowners to regulatory uncertainty and ambiguity about what they can do with their own land,” Paxton said.

Paxton had notified the Biden Administration in late July the listing violated the Endangered Species Act and he would sue if it was not reversed. The lawsuit asks the court to find the agencies acted arbitrarily and capriciously in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and the ESA.

Paxton also accused the Fish and Wildlife Service of intentionally being vague about the areas to be protected in this economically critical region.

The dunes sagebrush lizard, measuring just 2.5 inches long, inhabits roughly 4 percent of the 86,000-square-mile Permian Basin, which stretches across Texas and New Mexico, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. In Texas, the species has been identified in Andrews, Crane, Gaines, Ward, and Winkler counties.

The endangered listing mandates that oil and gas companies avoid areas where the dunes sagebrush lizard resides, but the Fish and Wildlife Service has not yet identified those specific regions as it continues to gather data. Depending on the severity of the violation, companies that violate this rule could face fines of up to $50,000 and potential prison time.

Paxton’s office criticized the Fish and Wildlife Service for not identifying the areas where the lizard resides, leaving operators and landowners in limbo about how they can use their land.

Any real science the bureaucrats in the Biden administration might use is purely coincidental.

Frankly, I hypothesize that the dunes sagebrush lizard is about as in danger of going extinct as a species as our planet is from “global warming” due to man-made carbon dioxide from fossil fuel production.

From ClimateREALISM

By H. Sterling Burnett

The Associated Press (AP) released a story claiming climate change is causing windstorms to worsen, threatening corn production, leading farmers to consider a new short corn variety. This story is false on almost every front. If farmers are considering a newly developed corn variety, its due to clever marketing by the company developing the crop, not changing climate conditions. Wind speeds and storms haven’t been increasing, aren’t forecast to at any time in the foreseeable future, and corn yields and production continue to set records with existing corn types.

The AP story, titled, “‘Short corn’ could replace the towering cornfields steamrolled by a changing climate,” the news agency writes:

Taking a late-summer country drive in the Midwest means venturing into the corn zone, snaking between 12-foot-tall green, leafy walls that seem to block out nearly everything other than the sun and an occasional water tower.

. . .

But soon, that towering corn might become a miniature of its former self, replaced by stalks only half as tall as the green giants that have dominated fields for so long.

The short corn developed by Bayer Crop Science is being tested on about 30,000 acres (12,141 hectares) in the Midwest with the promise of offering farmers a variety that can withstand powerful windstorms that could become more frequent due to climate change. (emphasis mine)

The facts tell a different story, however. Long corn is in no way being “steamrolled.” Corn yields and production continue to set new records, with some regularity, and there is no evidence that windstorms are becoming more frequent, or that wind speeds are increasing.

To the latter point first. The AP and other mainstream media outlets usually treat reports and pronouncements of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as authoritative on climate change. The IPCC’s latest report is clear concerning the impacts of climate change on wind speeds and damaging windstorms: no change has been detected at present; and, under the even the most extreme climate scenario, no change is anticipated in the foreseeable future, through 2100 at least. (see the figure, below)

So much for the AP’s claim that worsening winds pose a threat to corn production.

Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also show no climate change impacts on corn yields or production in the United States or globally.

A recently updated USDA report says that corn yields are expected to set a new record in 2024, increasing by 0.5 bushels per acre over the previous estimate, and by a full six bushels per acre of the previous record set in 2023. (See the graph, below)

Data from the FAO confirm the USDA’s findings concerning U.S. corn production and also determine that corn production and yields are regularly setting records around the world as well. Between 1990 and 2022 (the last full year of FAO records), spanning the three decades climate alarmists commonly assert have been the warmest on record:

• Corn yields in the United States have increased by nearly 60 percent’
• Corn yields globally have increased by more than 54 percent.

On record yields, crop production has similarly set new records repeatedly as well between 1990 and 2022. (See the graph, below)

Even if, contrary to the AP’s suggestion, corn production is not being harmed by worsening climate conditions, Bayer’s short corn variety may prove beneficial for farmers. It seems that, per the AP, “[t]he smaller plants also let farmers plant at greater density, so they can grow more corn on the same amount of land, increasing their profits.” The shorter corn may also use less water. Both conditions should, in theory, make corn production more profitable, regardless of climate change, so there is a bit of good news in the AP’s otherwise unjustifiably foreboding climate change tale.

H. Sterling Burnett

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News. In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burnett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.