Federal funds to improve coast of Kelleys Island

Finally. Some uplifting Great Lakes news to distract me from nearly four months of Asian carp insanity.

Ohio's getting $1.2 million to improve coastline access on Kelleys Island and an area north of Perry, Ohio.

It's coming in the form of Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding (translation: part of the special $475 million that President Obama budgeted to get a historic, $20 billion Great Lakes needs inventory off its shelf, a massive document the former Bush administration spent more than a year assembling only to abandon it).

For the Kelleys Island project, Erie MetroParks and the Western Reserve Land Conservancy are getting $476,000 to help acquire 18.5 acres of red cedar forest on the east side of the island, near Woodford and Monagan roads. An undisclosed amount of additional cash and in-kind services are to come from the conservancy. Last we knew, it was helping South Bass Island locals obtain land for East Point Nature Preserve, as well as lending a hand with hiking paths used to promote birding and that island's wildflowers.

Another $732,600 will be used by Lake Metroparks, with help from others, to acquire 114 acres of coastal bluffs, beach, and upland property for public use, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources said.

Speaking of Asian carp: Has anybody noticed how much Internet buzz this issue has generated, from Ted Nugent to women you once thought about dating in high school? I'm seeing all kinds of anger vented on Facebook. Just one site, stopasiancarp.com, has about 10,000 members. Apparently, the feds haven't caught on because they're still dragging their feet. Even a high school buddy of mine I haven't seen since 1977 - a guy who's lived in Hong Kong for nearly three decades - is incensed.

Yours truly had a few rants on the Feb. 19 broadcast of WGTE's Deadline Now (wgte.org/wgte/watch/item.asp?item_id=5354). Bonus: I'm in a premature (ahem) grey beard.

Bringing Out the Big Guns: That's the way a buddy of mine in Washington, widely regarded as one of the nation's top environmental writers (even if his employer doesn't like seeing his name in print), views Wednesday's announcement that the InterAcademy Council has been recruited to audit the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's work.

This council, I'm told, consists of the world's most prestigious science academies. It has been called in, presumably, to lend credence to the work of the Nobel-winning IPCC, the United Nations assemblage of the world's top climatologists whose credibility was attacked by climate naysayers.

Most notably, the IPCC backed down from its prediction that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035 - though, unbeknownst to most people, that forecast was not in the first volume of the landmark IPCC report, which concluded man-made pollution was undoubtedly making the planet warm faster than it would naturally.

Not to be cynical, but if the public can't accept a slam-dunk conclusion by the world's top climatologists (thereby making me wonder if it even recognizes climatology as a science), then why would it accept the findings of a prestigious multinational council, assuming the IPCC passes the audit? Both have enormous street cred, at least where real scientists hang out.

As I've said before, the science behind climate change exists whether you want to believe it or not. You can choose to believe the world is flat, but that doesn't mean it is. Whether it was arrogance, laziness, naivete, or indifference, the scientific community wrongly assumed the public would be savvy enough to decipher blatant lobbying, deception, and stall tactics, and that the science would win out.

As Rossford's Jack Roesler told me, the IPCC didn't realize it was in a street fight.

Now it does.

Contact Tom Henry at:

thenry@theblade.com

or 419-724-6079.