Reducing pollution levels in the air could lead to much higher levels of global warming, researchers have warned.

Reducing aerosols - small particles and droplets in the air produced by cars, chemical emissions and smoke - would allow more of the sun's heat to enter the atmosphere.

This would speed up the warming process, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The energy producers listened and for the past few decades, so-called wind farms have sprouted up all across the surface of our nation. One of the earliest windolectric facilities I can remember is on top of Altamont Pass in Alameda County, California. Altamont Pass seemed as if it were destined for use as a wind farm as it is located at the divide between the San Francisco bay area and California's great central valley. On days when the valley gets hot, as it has been doing for the past week, ambient air from the bay tries to fill the areas depleted by the rising hot air in the valley. The result is a strong westerly breeze that rushes across the top of Altamont Pass, through thousands of turbine generators and into the valley where the hot breeze hits my house and causes my PG&E bill to soar like Lanius ludovicianus.

Giant wind turbines at Altamont Pass, California, are illegally killing more than 1,000 birds of prey each year, according to a lawsuit filed January 12 by the Center for Biological Diversity. The suit demands an injunction halting operation of the turbines until and unless protective measures are taken and highlights increasing concerns regarding a power source long hailed as environmentally friendly by environmental activist groups.

"Altamont has become a death zone for eagles and other magnificent and imperiled birds of prey",said Jeff Miller, a spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity. "Birds come into the pass to hunt and get chopped up by the blades."

Owners of the wind turbines assert they have gone to great measures to protect birds from being sliced up by the turbine blades, but the technology simply does not exist to generate wind power without sacrificing an immense number of birds each year.

"It's so unfair to say we have not been actively trying to do anything," said Steve Stengel, a spokesman for Florida Power & Light Company, which owns many of the turbines. "WeÂve done everything from installing perch guards to painting rotor blades."

Miller, however, was skeptical wind power generators are doing all they can to ameliorate bird deaths.

"We're asking the judge to throw the book at them," said Miller. "We're not suggesting they're going to be shut down. We are suggesting turbine owners out there need to take some measures to reduce bird kill, and that they come up with some adequate mitigation or compensation."

by Scott Ott

(2005-07-09) -- Law enforcement authorities in major U.S. cities put riot police on high alert today after recently-jailed journalist Judith Miller complained that prison guards had desecrated her copy of The New York Times.

"We know that journalists worship the Times," said one deputy police chief, "If they take to the streets in protest, things could get ugly fast."

Ms. Miller, who works for the Times' counter-intelligence department, told an unnamed visitor that her copy of the revered 'Gray Lady' had been carelessly tossed on the floor, handled by a conservative Republican jailer (who she called 'an infidel') and may have been used as a lining for a cat's litter box.

"They did everything but flush it down the toilet," she said. "They have no respect for the 'paper of record', may it publish forever, nor for the wise and powerful ones who create this daily miracle."

Wednesday, a judge sentenced Ms. Miller to jail for obstructing a federal investigation into who leaked the identity of a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame, who also posed for pictures in a top-secret issue of Vanity Fair magazine.