For Immediate Release

November 7, 2006

Contact: Arctic Melting and Arctic Quest Author Chad Kister (740) 707-4110 or chadkister@gmail.com    www.chadkister.com    www.arcticrefuge.org

Police attack train riders civil liberties in Buffalo, New York

          Having just returned from Canada on a cross-continent speaking tour about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Climate Change, and solutions to both issues in part by increasing the use of super-fuel efficient train travel, my civil liberties were assaulted in Buffalo, New York, when an army of TSA police went through peoples luggage, and searched through my luggage as I was repacking it.  This was the first debut of the police state assault against trains.

            “Trains were the only public transportation running on September 11 so why go after them now?” Kister said.  “This appears to be a deliberate attempt by Global Warming Bush to harass people from using trains because oil companies have a century-long track record of dismantling trains in favor of highways and cars, because trains are so fuel efficient.”

            As I exited the train station, and walked to do a book signing about 2 miles away, heavy black smoke spewed from the industrial area nearby, with unquestionably toxic pollution.  If the more than dozen police officials who were engaged in violating peoples civil liberties by going through their luggage without their consent, were instead focusing on reducing preventable pollution, exponentially more lives would be saved.

            In fact, more than a hundred thousand people die every year from preventable pollution to the air, water and land, according to the US Public Interest Research Group, exponentially more than died on 9-11. 

            It seems Bush’s focus on terrorism is an effort to try to keep people scared, so they don’t focus on the real crimes going on in the United States by the pollution industries that supported his “election” campaign.  “Trains are the solution to climate change, and adding more delays and civil liberties violations for passengers using them will only put more people on the road.”

            The TSA used scanners and physically searched through peoples’ luggage as they were boarding trains headed to destinations within the United States.

            “This is going too far,” Kister said.  “This unnecessarily discourages people from going by train, by forcing them to wait in line for unnecessary security delays.”

            If police were truly interested in the real terrorism threats to the United States, they would strengthen security to Chemical Plants, something Bush has blocked and opposed.  Passengers riding on trains are far less of a threat than the Chemical plants that pose massive threats throughout the United States, and are as unguarded today as they were on 9-11.

            I have a chapter in my Arctic Melting book about how the Pentagon found that Climate Change was a much more serious threat than terrorism.  The 2004 $100,000 Pentagon Report found that “climate change vastly eclipses the threat of terrorism.”  The report was commissioned by Andrew Marshall, a 30-year veteran of the pentagon.  The Global Warming Bush administration attempted to suppress the report, but it was leaked by the Observer-Guardian of London, and got lots of international news, but shockingly little coverage in the United States.

            And since 2004, scientists have shown that their predictions pale in comparison with the increased temperatures that we are seeing.  NASA Senior Scientists James Hansen reported last month that the melting in Greenland has doubled in just the last 5 years.  Hansen said that if we just looked historically at what the Earth was like when it was 3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, sea levels were 25 meters higher.  The Intergovermental panel on climate change, reported that temperatures could rise 8 degrees Celsius this century.