Useful Fools

The “Global Warming” hysteria is in full swing.

The Carbon Fund has the dumbest motto yet:

Toward a Zero Carbon World

We carbon-based life forms hope they don’t reach their goal.

Save the snakehead!

The northern snakehead is an endangered species of fish living in and near the Potomac River. This unusual species can also crawl across land, a trait that could indicate genes useful for medical research.

The snakehead habitat is 68 million acres in 11 Eastern States and Washington, D.C.

The Endangered Species Act, already in widespread use in the West, requires strict restrictions on building, transportation and recreation in the habitat area in order to protect the fish. Currently, the snakehead is listed as an injurious species, denying it the listing it deserves. Injurious means that the government has determined it to be harmful to resources, other wildlife, forests or agriculture. However, the gray wolf (Canis Lupus) and red wolf (Canis rufus) are injurious by that definition and yet carry the “endangered” protection. The snakehead, far less damaging or dangerous than the wolf, is at least as deserving of protection. Furthermore, it must be protected under treaties signed by the United States including the Convention on Nature Protection and Wildlife Preservation in the Western Hemisphere.

Protections should include restrictions on the use of motorized craft on habitat waterways; review of all building projects to assure they will not block the over-land travel of the fish; restrictions on or prevention of commercial and amateur fishing in the habitat waterways; restriction on agricultural practices which may block movement of, or kill individual members of this species; creation of fish walkways under all roads and highways in the affected area; research funding to assure the efficacy of these measures, as there has been little evidence of success in conservation methods ordered under the Act for other species, as indicated by the failure to remove any species from the list in the last 30 years.

Westerners love our land and nature, and so a Colorado county government officials are leading the way in protecting the fish on the east coast. This provides the vast experience of the west with this law to assist the east coast in meeting it’s needs and obligation to protect endangered species.
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Randal Robinson has todays Kerry Campaign Poster of the Day.

With the Russians appearing to kill Kyoto, and the discussion heating up, I decided to write it up again…

The global warming alarmists look to the UN’s IPCC report (which comes out periodically) for the best scientific information on the subject. The report has an executive summary, which is highly edited in a political manner, and which is the only thing reported in the press. The main body of the report, which is written by the actual scientific committee is much less alarmist and expresses great uncertainty.

The Kyoto treaty is a fraud, and its proponents know it…. read on….
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My dogs had a major triumph today. First, a meter reader came. They barked furiously and he went away. They were very proud.

Then the garbage man came. Again they barked furiously and he too went away. They were even more proud.

This happens every week and is a great source of satisfaction to them.

Since the mid 19th century, CO2 in the atmosphere has risen 30%. Surface temperatures have risen about 1 degree. Environmentalists thus tell us that putting CO2 into the atmosphere caused the temperature to rise.

They too are very proud!

THERE’S NOBODY THERE - HOW CAN THERE BE ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM?

Recently I read that a refinery project proposed for the almost empty desert near Mobile, Arizona is being opposed on the grounds of “environmental racism.” Apparently the local press never bothered to do any research. Otherwise they would have reported that Mobile is has only 33 people in the vicinity, none of them closer than a mile to the site, and the vast majority are white!

ONSITE RESEARCH

Having driven to the area decades ago and seen no population at all, I was rather surprised at the implication that a minority community had sprung up. Thus, armed with a camera and GPS, an expedition was mounted to investigate this amazing development. The pictures are shown throughout this article. In addition, a little web research was undertaken.

Here is a picture of the pristine environment about to be protected by this doctrine:

Naturally, it is primarily used to block progress - as a useful legal and propaganda weapon in the armory of radical environmentalists and NIMBY’s. It’s especially useful since so few people understand it, much less see its effects. In accord with the idea of blocking any progress, the Clinton administration created an EPA organization (NEJAC) to ensure compliance with this dubious doctrine.
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My uncle is a retired forest resources economist and a long-time outdoor enthusiast. He is also a determined opponent of the modern religion of environmentalism (which has replaced the more sane idea of conservationism).

He points out that the beautiful film, “Last of the Mohicans” was filmed in clear-cut private forest!
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Edward at Zonitics noticed the enviro-whackos trying to block an improvement to the power grid by using the Gentry Indigo Bush. Apparently the bushes grow only in the path along which the transmission line will go, so building it will wipe them out. Or something like that…

But never fear, the same Tucsonian idiots are trying to block-off a much wider area, stopping not only power lines but most everything else. They want to set aside 64 SQUARE MILES of prime land PER OWL (a total of 1920 square miles!) to protect a pygmy owl - although they can only find 18 of the critters. Even the left-wing moonbat 9th Circuit court found that too much to swallow, and sent it back for review (i.e. make an argument that sounds better so we can approve this land grab without being lynched).

Haven’t they ever heard of Darwin and the fitness of species? One might suspect that the rarity of these owls is due to natural The birds are probably so rare because they can’t find each other in all that land!

Go figure…

A few months ago I took a picture of the above billboard in Heber, AZ this year. Click on it to see the full picture.

From USA TODAY:

The Bush administration and Congress, pressing to enact a “Healthy Forests Initiative” that calls for thinning 20 million acres of forest, are “on the right track,” said Dirk Kempthorne, Idaho’s Republican governor, refecting [sic] the opinion of most on the tour.

But if the governors had gone instead to the scene of Colorado’s worst wildfire, the Hayman fire of 2002, they might have had a bit more skepticism about the beneficial effects of forest thinning.
Yes, let’s take one anecdote and draw our conclusions from that…

Click here for information on the billboard shown above, and the Rodeo-Chedeski fire that burned up so much of our beautiful Arizona ponderosa forest.
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As one who lived in California early in the reign of the coastal commission, the following article comes as no surprise. For those not familiar, the California Coastal Commission is a powerful body whose job is to keep environmentalists happy and to destroy the property rights of those who live near the ocean. Like any bureaucracy, of course, its real job is to protect and increase its power!
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