We Didn’t Have “The Green Thing” Back Then

The   Green  Thing

Checking  out at  the store, the young cashier  suggested to the
older woman that she  should bring  her own  grocery bags because
plastic bags weren’t  good  for  the environment.

The woman   apologized and explained, “We didn’t  have  this green
thing back in my earlier  days.”

The clerk   responded, “That’s  our problem today. Your generation did
not care  enough  to save our environment for  future   generations.”

She was right  –  our  generation didn’t have the green thing in  its  day.

Back  then,  we returned milk  bottles, soda bottles and beer  bottles
to the  store. The  store sent them back to the  plant  to be washed
and sterilized and  refilled,  so  it could use the same bottles over
and over. So   they really  were recycled. But we didn’t  have the
green thing back in our   day.

We walked up  stairs, because we didn’t  have an escalator in  every
store and office  building. We walked to the grocery store  and
didn’t  climb into a 300-horsepower machine   every time we had to go
two blocks.  But she  was right.  We didn’t have the green thing in
our  day.

Back   then, we washed the baby’s  diapers because we didn’t have  the
throw-away  kind. We dried clothes on a line,   not in an energy
gobbling machine  burning up  220 volts  – wind and solar power
really did dry  our clothes   back in our early days. Kids got
hand-me-down clothes from  their brothers  or  sisters, not always
brand-new  clothing. But that  young lady is right.  We didn’t have
the  green thing back in our day.

Back then, we   had  one TV, or radio, in the house — not a  TV in
every room. And the TV had a  small  screen the size of  a
handkerchief (remember  them?), not a screen the  size  of the state
of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and  stirred  by  hand because
we didn’t have electric   machines to do everything for us. When we
packaged  a fragile  item to send in the mail, we used wadded  up old
newspapers to cushion it, not  Styrofoam or plastic bubble  wrap.
Back  then,  we didn’t fire up an engine and  burn  gasoline just to
cut the lawn. We  used a   push mower that ran on human power. We
exercised  by working  so we  didn’t need to go to a  health club to
run on  treadmills that operate  on  electricity. But she’s  right.
We  didn’t have the green thing back    then.

We drank from a fountain when we were  thirsty  instead of  using a
cup or a plastic  bottle every time  we had a drink of water.  We
refilled writing pens with  ink instead of  buying a new pen, and we
replaced the  razor  blades in a razor instead of throwing away the
whole  razor just because the blade got dull.  But we  didn’t have the
green thing  back  then.

Back  then, people took the streetcar  or a bus, and kids   rode their
bikes to  school or walked instead of turning  their moms  into a
24-hour taxi service. We had  one  electrical outlet in a room, not an
entire   bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And  we didn’t
need a  computerized gadget to  receive a signal beamed  from
satellites 2,000  miles  out in space in order to  find the  nearest
pizza joint.

But isn’t it   sad  the current generation laments how wasteful we old
folks were just because we didn’t have the green  thing back  then?

Please forward  this  on to another selfish  old person who needs a
lesson in conservation from a  smartass young  person.
Remember:  Don’t  make old people mad.

We don’t  like being  old in the first place, so  it doesn’t take much
to piss us off.

Forest Service Moonbat, Andy Stahl, Wants Fire Retardant Banned

I’m guessing this moron is a book-learned, ponytailed, east coast liberal that has never lived outside of the city.

We Don't Have Small Fires Out Here

More than 81,000 gallons of retardant were dropped on two of the biggest fires in the north state in the past two weeks.

That kind of firefighting strategy is coming under closer scrutiny, though, as a federal judge has ordered the U.S. Forest Service to take a closer look at the environmental effects of dropping fire retardant on wildland fires.

“The government has to begin to reassess how, where and when this is done,” said Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEEE), which sued the Forest Service over its use of chemical fire retardant.

“Retardant is toxic,” Stahl said.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Donald Malloy of Missoula, Mont., ruled that the Forest Service needs to complete an environmental-impact statement on the use of retardant by the end of 2011, The Associated Press reported.

The case dates back to a lawsuit filed by FSEEE in 2003, challenging the use of retardant without an environmental impact report, AP reported. The case was dismissed in 2008 after the Forest Service completed an environmental assessment.

But FSEEE filed again in 2008, claiming the environmental document was inadequate, AP said.

Jennifer Jones, a Forest Service spokeswoman, said her agency hasn’t determined whether it will appeal the judge’s ruling or complete another environmental review. Jones said she doesn’t know how much retardant is used in the Shasta-Trinity or Lassen national forests. Nationwide, an average of 20 million gallons of retardant is dropped on fires annually by the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and state agencies, she said.

The Forest Service’s policy is to not drop retardant within 300 feet of any body of water, Jones said. Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said Cal Fire’s retardant policy is similar to the Forest Service’s.

Berlant said that in 2009 Cal Fire dropped 5.3 million gallons of retardant statewide.

Stahl said his organization has notified Cal Fire that it intends to sue the agency, claiming the retardant kills threatened and endangered species.

Berlant said his agency has not received that notice. He said Cal Fire has studied the environmental effects of using retardant and issued what is called under the California Environmental Quality Act a “negative declaration,” which means using retardant won’t have a significant environmental impact.

Even though only 14 of the 128,000 retardant drops during the past eight years caused the death of protected fish or plants, Malloy said the assessment was still needed, AP reported.

Stahl said he didn’t know of any cases where retardant drops killed protected species in the Shasta-Trinity or Lassen national forests. But hundreds of endangered steelhead were killed when retardant was dropped in a creek while firefighters were battling the Jesusita Fire in Santa Barbara County this summer, Stahl said.

Jones said that using retardant to fight fires protects endangered species from having their habitat destroyed by wildfire.

Water is a better alternative than retardant, Stahl said, noting that retardant is rarely used east of the Mississippi River.

Of the 110.2 million gallons of retardant used nationwide from 2004 to 2008, about 2 million gallons — just less than 2 percent — were dropped east of the Mississippi, Jones said.

Retardant is used more in the West because fires often occur in more remote places, where there are fewer roads, Jones said.

Retardant is about 85 percent water, 10 percent fertilizer and 5 percent other ingredients, Jones said.

“Because retardant contains fertilizer it is more effective than water,” Jones said. “When the water evaporates, the retardant still slows the fire.”

But many plants in the West thrive in tough conditions where there are few nutrients. Introducing high levels of fertilizer allows invasive species to grow and push out the native plants, Stahl said.

Source

Retardant is toxic says Stahl. Hey asshole, so is fire. Retardant and air attack is the only thing that keeps the western US from burning to the ground, and this jackass worries about killing a few fish or plants to save humans.

Stahl also says, “Water is a better alternative than retardant, Stahl said, noting that retardant is rarely used east of the Mississippi River”. And just how many forest fires start east of the Mississippi? Fucking retard.

The Greens Are Never Happy

Now the Greens have everything they’ve been waiting for. Both houses of congress are controlled by liberal democrats, and the White House has a radical  liberal President who has vowed to destroy America by insisting on “green” power, among various other things. So how could there be a problem? Seems to me, they don’t want green energy, they want no energy at all.  I think this is their plan….

What else could they want? Here’s the latest NIMBY* excuses.

*(not in my back yard)

A key part of President Obama’s energy plan — replacing fossil fuels with green alternatives — is facing increasing opposition from an unlikely source: environmentalists.

Some environmentalists, who have successfully fought a wind farm on the border of Oregon and Washington, are trying to block a massive solar plant in the Mojave desert. And now an Oregon county is considering a ban on wind power in the foothills of the blue mountains.

“We all want to be as green as we can be. But at what cost?” Richard Jolly of the Blue Mountain Alliance. “To take everything from us? This valley could be surrounded by them.”

Jolly says 400-foot wind turbines are a bird-killing eyesore. The developer argues the danger to birds is exaggerated but admits every big energy project has its downside.

“If we hold out for the perfect environmental silver bullet, if you will, it will always be 15 years down the road,” he said. “We have to make incremental progress.”

For decades, environmental groups have talked about “big oil,” painting the petroleum industry as greedy and destructive. Now similar language is being applied to renewables. Instead of eco-friendly green power, increasingly it’s “big wind” and “big solar.”

Large environmental groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, bristle at the idea of dissension in the ranks.

“We are working very aggressively to make a planning process happen with utilities, with industry, with local groups all at the table,” said Rick Duke, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Center for Market Innovation.

Obama has set a goal of getting 25 percent of the nation’s power from renewable sources by 2025. The White House contends that will create millions of jobs and has the support of business and environmental leaders.

But many local activists say we need to slow this rush to renewables or risk trading one power problem for another. Source

Maybe they were surprised they got everything they wanted and they didn’t have a plan for that.

More dissent in the Democratic camp. Oh Darn!

Democrats Protecting Gore’s Global Warming Lies

You, will not question my authority

Al Gore refuses to debate anyone on the facts of global warming. He refuses to answer questions at his sermons about global warming. The mainstream media will not publish or air any opposing facts about global warming. Now, the Democrat lead Congress itself is protecting the lies spewed by Al Gore. Follow The Money!!

Washington, DC – UK’s Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington. Monckton told Climate Depot that the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Friday. Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon.

“The House Democrats don’t want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face,” Monckton told Climate Depot in an exclusive interview. “They are cowards.”

According to Monckton, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), Ranking Member on the Energy & Commerce Committee, had invited him to go head to head with Gore and testify at the hearing on Capitol Hill Friday. But Monckton now says that when his airplane from London landed in the U.S. on Thursday, he was informed that the former Vice-President had “chickened out” and there would be no joint appearance. Gore is scheduled to testify on Friday to the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment’s fourth day of hearings on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The hearing will be held in 2123 Rayburn House Office Building.

According to Monckton, House Democrats told the Republican committee staff earlier this week that they would be putting forward an unnamed ‘celebrity’ as their star witness Friday at a multi-panel climate hearing examining the House global warming bill. The “celebrity” witness turned out to be Gore. Monckton said the GOP replied they would respond to the Democrats’ “celebrity” with an unnamed “celebrity” of their own. But Monckton claims that when the Democrats were told who the GOP witness would be, they refused to allow him to testify alongside Gore.

Climate Depot has more with some updates.

H/T marinetbryant @ GCP

Speaking of lies and following the money, Steve Milloy of Green Hell Blog has found Gore lying directly to congress. Do you think the Dem controlled congress cares if another Dem lies to them? Yes, that is a rhetorical question. But read about it HERE.

!!Update!! Don’t miss part 2 of Gore lying to congress. Steve Milloy at Green Hell Blog has a lot of details.

Burning Bodies for Enviro-Friendly Heat

You just can’t make this stuff up. Nobody would believe you. It’s from Gore Lied.

Not even two weeks has passed since GORE LIED linked to a post from The People’s Cube regarding a satirical proposal to burn dead people as an alternative fuel:

Comrades, we all know that the dead workers and peasants of the USSA have voted many times for our socialist fraternal brothers and sisters in government. However, other than voting, these dead comrades do nothing for us. Is there not a way we can reanimate these corpses and put them to work? Perhaps feed them into one of Algore’s new zero emission clean power plants? NecroPower anyone?

Kinda funny. Until today. Cleantechnica.com reports:

If you’re dead and worried about the carbon emissions created from your cremation, relax. The Swedish town of Halmstad has a solution. After an environmental review showed that Halmstad’s crematorium was pumping too much smoke into the air, the facility’s director decided to re-use heat from the cremations to warm up the crematorium’s buildings.

The plan will both eliminate the crematorium’s heating bill and allow it to save money on cooling smoke before it is released into the air.

Locals in the town of 55,000 approve of the crematorium’s system, so it should be up and running soon. If the plan is successful, the crematorium eventually wants to pipe heat from its facilities to area homes. And while some may protest Halmstad’s plan on moral grounds, I’m sure that the potential monetary savings for the town will ultimately keep them quiet.

This is so far over the top, I have nothing left to say.

Your Tax $ To Study Pond Scum

More of your tax dollars are going to the Greens to study the feasibility of pond scum becoming an energy source.

On Greenish Pond

The federal government is starting to throw money into it. The Department of Energy has invested $2.3 million in algae-to-fuel grants so far this year. It invested $2.2 million in algae research in 2006 and 2007, though it wasn’t specific to fuel production.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research arm of the Defense Department, is launching a new program to study algal feedstock material, said Jan Walker, an agency spokesman.

Not all that much money you say? Take a look at this.

“We can grow algae. It’s been demonstrated,” said Al Darzins, a manager at the National Bioenergy Center at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colo.

But it costs anywhere from $10 to $100 a gallon now, and “obviously that’s not cost-effective,” he said.

The Colorado lab led a $25 million study of algae from 1978 to 1996, before money dried up and government research shifted to ethanol.

Still no big deal?

“I’m convinced algae will work, but it’ll take a different, out-of-the-box approach,” said Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla, delivering the keynote address at the Algae Biomass Summit in Seattle last month.
The potential for algae to compete with fossil fuels is there, but it will take scientific breakthroughs to bring down costs and solve climate change, said Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, whose Khosla Ventures has invested in renewable energy, though not algae.

There is the problem I have with alternative energy. I don’t want to pay for the research. Look at this Khosla person for instance. He’s a billionaire. He has more money than the government (trillions in debt) yet he doesn’t want to put his own money into the research. Either the idea is not really that good, or he’s just another Algore. These people get up and preach about what a great idea they have but do you see anyone actually spending their own money or living the lifestyle they want you to live? No. They don’t do it. They want the government (you and me) to pay for it, and for everyone but them to sacrifice their lifestyle so they can buy some carbon credits and live guilt free. And some even buy their carbon credits from a company they own. Imagine that!

Source

Open Letter To Environmentalists

This is an open letter from John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, regarding the global warming cult.

Thank you for your dedication to protecting our environment. Clean air and clean water are essential to preserving life on planet Earth. Protecting all species and natural lands and forests are admirable priorities. Recycling and a green lifestyle are wonderful. Making the environment the most important thing in your life is a good thing, not a problem. I support you.

But we do have a problem. You have vigorously embraced the Global Warming predictions of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and are using the warning of uncontrollable warming and a resulting environmental calamity to campaign for elimination of fossil fuels. Your environmentally conscious friends in politics and in the media have united with you to create a barrage of news reports, documentaries, TV feature reports, movies, books, concerts and protest events to build support for your goals. The war against fossil fuels has become a massive scare campaign that is giving children nightmares.

Here’s what’s wrong with that: the science is not valid. There is no Global Warming underway and the science on which the computer projections of weather chaos are based is wrong. Dead wrong.

I know many scientists are part of your movement and they have tried hard to give your uncontrollable climate change panic a scientific basis. The UN Climate Change Panel has a large staff, a big budget, a headquarters in Geneva and a strong champion in Al Gore to lead the charge. And thousands of well-intentioned politicians and the media of the world have supported your movement. It must seem to you that there can be no doubt: fossil fuels are destroying the environment and will lead to uncontrollable global warming unless we act now. With all that powerful support for your anti-fossil fuel movement, and with the worthy goal of saving the planet from the disastrous consequences of runaway Global Warming, how can you fail?

Here’s how: The science behind your global warming scare is bad and no anthropogenic global warming is happening. Dissenting scientists have now produced convincing evidence that the cornerstone of your scientific argument, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide forcing a rapid, irreversible rise in temperature, is invalid. All of the various “signs of global warming” you have so widely publicized have been proven wrong. They are normal variations in climate that result mostly from the cycles of the Sun. As the Sun cycle has changed in the last three or four years, they have reversed themselves. Arctic ice melting and polar bears dying, shrinkage of glaciers and the rise of ocean levels, increased intensity and number of hurricanes and intensified droughts have all been touted as signs of global warming. They are not. They are part of this natural variation in climate. The intensified hurricane claim never happened. Katrina was an isolated, random event. The droughts are part of the natural cycle and are reversing at this time. Glaciers are stabilizing. The Arctic ice cap is already back to normal.

Here is what I am suggesting you do. Campaign for your environmental goals on the basis of their own merit. Let go of the global warming frenzy before it leaves you discredited and embarrassed. Stop screaming, “The sky is falling.” It is not.

Do your good work. Devote your lives to our environment. In many ways you will succeed. We are all grateful for your love of the planet. But, don’t use scare tactics.

Most of all I urge you not to become extremists. And, may I encourage you to live your lives in a loving way, love your fellow human beings and our wonderful advanced standard of living and way of life as much as you love the Earth.

My very best regards,

John Coleman

P.s. – If you will read my briefs on the science that debunks the global warming frenzy and follow the links there, you will begin to realize the folly of Global Warming.

Go to ICECAP.us for a starter.

JC

Via NewsBusters

Source

Politics And The Polar Bear

It seems Barbara Boxer is getting her way by going to a liberal judge, in Oakland of course, to rule on listing the polar bear as endangered.

A federal judge in Oakland has ordered the Interior Department to decide by May 15 if the polar bear should be protected as an endangered species because of melting sea ice due to global warming.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken decided, in a ruling released today, that government failed to meet the deadline of Jan. 9, a legal requirement under the Endangered Species Act. She dismissed the Bush administration’s plea to give it until June 30, saying officials offered “no specific facts that would justify the existing delay, much less further delay.”

To give the administration more time, the judge wrote, “would violate the mandated listing deadlines under the [Endangered Species Act] and congressional intent that time is of the essence in listing threatened species.”

Wilken’s decision is a victory for three conservation groups that petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, an agency of the Interior Department, to protect the polar bear as a species threatened with extinction because of receding sea ice.

But the real reason is not to help the polar bear, it is to close ANWR once and for all.

The polar bear listing comes as the Bush administration is moving to open to new oil and gas drilling prime polar bear habitat in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s north coast. Under questioning from members of Congress, Interior Department officials have asserted that the delay on the polar bear listing and the movement toward new drilling are not connected.

Moreover, the Bush administration and global warming skeptics, such as Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) have argued that the effort to list the polar bear as endangered is part of an agenda by environmentalists to thwart new coal-fired power plants needed to meet America’s growing energy needs.

Source
Canada, which has roughly two thirds of the polar bear population, just ruled that the polar bear is NOT threatened. So if the ruling is any different here, you can bet it’s the liberal left twisting the facts and working the system to their benefit.

AND THIS JUST IN!!
U.S. group calls on Canada to list polar bears as threatened

An American environmental activist group says it wants Canada to follow suit if the U.S. lists polar bears as a threatened species.

With the U.S. government expected to announce within weeks whether to grant the bears protection as a threatened species under its Endangered Species Act, the Center for Biological Diversity criticized a Canadian scientific committee’s recommendation last week to list the bears as a species of “special concern” in Canada.

“The only way that recommendation was issued for a ‘species of special concern’ was by simply ignoring projections based on global warming, and we think that was incorrect,” Kassie Siegel, an attorney with the California and Arizona-based group, told CBC News on Tuesday.

On Friday, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) recommended that the federal government keep polar bears on the list of species of “special concern,” a status that is one step down from “threatened” and two steps down from “endangered.”

The polar bear has had the “special concern” status since 1991.

Members on the scientific advisory committee said the “special concern” listing best reflects varying conditions among the numerous polar bear populations in Canada’s North, which has declining polar bear numbers in some parts but stable or even rising numbers in others.

And we all know that an Activist Group based in Arizona and California knows a lot more about polar bears than the people that live with them. Egotistical? That’s putting it mildly.
Source

More Scare Tactics From The Enviro-nuts

A must read article from The Washington Times. It seems the Rodent Doctors have come up with the latest threat to mankind.

A new health scare — over the safe and useful plastic component, bisphenol-A (BPA) — has taken wing, fomented by the usual suspects: “experts” in rat toxicology working with alarmist, chemical-hating “environmental” activists and self-serving media scaremongers. Soon, we know all too well, will come the plaintiffs’ lawyers to “protect” the public from the non-existent (but lucrative) threats lurking in our plastic bottles.

Once again, our environmental stewards have ventured into an area to which they are ill-suited: human health. The new draft report on the chemical, issued by the National Toxicology Program (NTP, a branch of the EPA), is being trumpeted by greeniacs everywhere as if a cure for cancer had been discovered or malaria eradicated.

The facts buried in the report are quite the opposite of the newspaper headlines. There is no cause for concern, much less alarm, over the tiny exposures we face from plastic bottles made with BPA. The hysteria, aggravated by reports of moms nationwide throwing out “toxic” baby bottles with the number 7 on them, is based (as usual) on rat tests and “general themes” of toxicity, rather than on anything approaching scientific evidence.

This new scare is part and parcel of the “back to nature” school of public health. There is no substance to the dogma promulgated by technophobes that “natural is good, synthetic is bad.” All of the great epidemic infections we have conquered are of “natural” origin — and we beat them with technology. The same folks who warn us against BPA — and phthalates in toys and all the other phony threats — tend to oppose gene-splicing technology, which holds the promise of relieving food scarcity now threatening world health and stability. But they’d rather rant about non-existent health threats they invent than deal with real-life problems. They have been warning us about the dangers of cosmetics, French fries and vaccines — while ignoring real problems, such as smoking and underutilization of interventions such as colonoscopy and adult immunizations.

The Rest is Here

Still Think Bio-Fuel Is a Good Idea? !Updated! Video Added

Think again. Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That’s enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel — oil and natural gas — to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers — all of which are fuel-using activities. And it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 or 12 percent.

Here’s another very good explanation. I just couldn’t leave it out.

Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The U.S. position as the world’s largest grain producer and exporter means the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.

And it leads to this.

Poverty, famine and violence are among the supposed products of global warming in the future. Yet these calamities are with us today thanks to a key element of “green” policy, biofuels. This feel-good measure is becoming a real-world disaster.

The prices of wheat and rice this year will have doubled since 2004, according to World Bank projections. Soybeans, sugar, soybean oil and corn are expected to be 56% to 79% costlier than in 2004. The bulk of the increases have come in the past year and can be attributed to the West’s push to turn these crops into fossil-fuel replacements like ethanol. Food prices will likely remain overinflated until at least 2015, the Bank says.

The result of these rising prices is that 100 million people could slip back into poverty, erasing seven years’ worth of gains, Bank President Robert Zoellick warned earlier this month. Food inflation and shortages have sparked riots from Egypt to the Philippines, and six people were killed in Haiti alone during nine days of related unrest there this month.

The Rest Here
Another example of feel good politics being put in place before all the problems are considered. And considering the ineffectiveness of ethanol as an alternative fuel, this has to be one of the biggest scams out there.

Gloworms Will Blame Anything

You just can’t make this stuff up. Now there’s a study that says melting ice causes volcanoes. It seems to me they’re getting desperate by trying to reverse the facts. Fire melts Ice. Ice does not cause Fire. Of course they could be getting their talking points from Rosie O. (first time in history fire ever melted steel)

Increased volcanic activity is linked to ice melted by the effects of global warming.

So much ice in Iceland has melted in the past century that the pressure on the land beneath has lessened, which allows more of the rock deep in the ground to turn to magma. Until the ice melted, the pressure was so intense that the rock remained solid.

Carolina Pagli, of the University of Leeds, led research which calculated that over the past century the production of magma had increased by 10 per cent.

The research team, reporting their findings in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, said an extra 1.4 cu km of magma has been created under the Vatnajökull ice-cap in the past 100 years.

Since 1890 the ice-cap has lost 10 per cent of its mass, which has allowed the land to rise by up to 25m (82ft) a year. The volume lost between 1890 and 2003 is estimated at 435 cu km.

How long it will take before the extra magma erupts in Iceland and other regions of the North Atlantic Ridge remains uncertain. It is formed at depths of 15 to 112 km, and Dr Pagli estimated it will be a century or two before it is ejected by volcanoes.

Now I’m no scientist, but I do know the smell of bullsh!t. To put this crap out there and say it might be a century, or two, before anything happens is just more from the Global Warming Cult trying to get people to drink the Kool-Aid.

Source

Sen. Boxer’s Panties In a Twist

Babs has her panties all in a twist because she’s having a hard time getting the next “spotted owl” listed as an endangered species. It seems she’s in a rush to get the Polar Bear listed before time runs out. She says time is running out for the polar bear. I say it is running out for global warming, and the liberal loons have a need for another poster child to keep up the global warming fraud. And a little thing called ANWAR.

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) – Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne declined to appear before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Tuesday for an oversight hearing on the department’s delay on deciding whether to list the polar bear as an endangered species.

The committee chairman called Kempthorne’s decision a “slap at the committee.”

“This listing is months overdue in violation of the law,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairman of the committee.

“Sadly, despite the peer-reviewed scientific evidence, despite the opinion of scientists in our own government, despite the fact that we have a strong, successful law to protect imperiled species – the Endangered Species Act (ESA) – the Bush administration continues to break the law by failing to make a final decision to list the polar bear,” she said.

“The Bush administration does not have the right or discretion to ignore the law,” Boxer said. She also intimated that she might compel Kempthorne to testify before the committee.

There are legal reasons for Kempthorne not being there, and you can read them at the link at the bottom of the page. But what is the rush to list an animal that might have a problem in 50 years?

“It would be a mistake to list the presently healthy and sustainable polar bear populations as a threatened species under the ESA,” testified William Horn, former assistant secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks during the Reagan administration.

“Such action will produce a variety of adverse consequences including creating an ESA listing precedent that opens Pandora’s Box in the form of other unwarranted listings that will diminish resources available for bona fide wildlife conservation and recovery efforts, setting the stage for new rounds of litigation and judicial activism to turn the ESA into a regulatory monster of unprecedented proportions, and harming existing successful polar bear conservation and management programs,” Horn added.

“A decision to list a presently healthy species – exhibiting no present trajectory toward endangerment based on large scale hemispheric models forecasting problems 50 years in the future is a radical departure from the language of the ESA,” he said.

“It pushes the decision horizon far into the genuinely unseeable future, is predicated on uncertain intervening events where it is difficult if not impossible to tie those events directly to specific on-the-ground situations and will likely precipitate the subsequent listing of an array of otherwise healthy species which might also be forecast to face problems a half century or more from now.”

Horn added, “Listing today’s healthy polar bear populations as threatened will open the gate to new rounds of litigation and judicial activism that will likely turn the ESA into a regulatory monster of unprecedented proportions.”

He further noted that the ESA and the Fish and Wildlife Service have no expertise in the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

The rush is twofold. The left needs another Poster Child for the ESA to keep up the Global Warming Fraud.

But I believe the real reason is to close ANWAR for good. They are in a hurry to list the polar bear, not out of concern or compassion. They see a chance to kill two birds with one stone. ANWAR is the big target. The left has been trying to permanently close it to drilling for decades now. The rest is just icing on the cake.
The Rest Here

Also

Boxer’s Twisted Panties: Another View

Tree Huggers Wrong Again?

Yep, it appears saving the trees and stopping the dreaded “Global Warming” do not go hand in hand. I don’t think they can have it both ways. Moonbat heads will explode. Here’s an excerpt. It starts out talking about the Live Earth concert last year, and the Earth Hour.

This year, 27 “partner cities” were named on the campaign’s Web site. They included Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco and Phoenix. Sort of reminds us of last July’s Live Earth concert series, when the various NBC networks provided 75 hours of free air time to Al Gore and friends for concerts on its various stations.

NBC host Bob Costas sat in a darkened studio for a full minute as an energy-saving gesture while millions watched on their energy-consuming plasma TVs.

Never mind that it involved flying rock stars around the planet in emission-spewing private jets to plug their electric guitars into Godzilla-size amplifiers. Everything was fine, we were told, because everyone was buying “carbon offsets,” a scam that lets warming hypocrites continue their energy gluttony because they’re paying somebody somewhere to plant a tree.

In the green scheme of things, trees are a good thing and deforestation is bad. We must plant as many trees as we can to suck up all that CO2, the pollutant that sustains all plant and therefore all animal life on earth. Old-growth forests must be protected from those nasty loggers.

Trouble is, according to Thomas Bonnicksen, professor emeritus of forest science at Texas A&M University, forests left in “pristine” condition have too many trees and too many dead ones, both of which provide fuel for the devastating forest fires that ravaged California last year.

Bonnicksen is also a visiting scholar at the California Forest Foundation and has authored a study available at its Web site (calforestfoundation.org). It shows that four large California wildfires produced 38 million tons of greenhouse gases through fire and subsequent decay of dead trees — 10 million from the fires themselves and 28 million from the post-fire decay. This is equivalent to the emissions from 7 million cars for an entire year.

I’m beginning to think the Green Movement, and Tree Huggers in particular, have done more damage in the US in the last 30 years than any other source. And it all seems to come from ignorance and ego trips. Be sure to READ IT ALL.
H/T JunkScience

Related: How Lies Killed a Small Town

Moonbats Start Earth Hour With Fireworks

AP Photo

What is wrong with these people? This probably makes sense to the warped minds of the Eco-nuts, but what is the gain here? Turn out the lights for an hour, and set off some carbon spewing fireworks. They can’t even stage a decent protest. Do they even know what they are supposed to be doing anymore? Sheesh….

The story and more photos HERE.

How Lies Killed a Small Town

Back in the 70′s I had ties to a nice little town here in the State of Jefferson. Hayfork was a roaring little town, home to several sawmills, many loggers, truck drivers and all the assorted businesses that support logging. It’s way off the beaten path and you have to be looking for it to get there, so it’s not a tourist destination, though it has a lot of natural beauty. So, when the logging industry left so did most of the people with money and jobs. The Wall Street Journal has an article about some rebirth of the town, but first let’s see what killed it in the first place,and how it was all a lie.

Situated in a lush mountain valley in Northern California, Hayfork began as a mining town in the 1800s, and by the 1950s, it was a lumber town with as many as seven sawmills. Amid industry consolidation in the 1980s, it became home to one big mill, owned by California timber giant Sierra Pacific Industries.

Everything came crashing down in 1990. That year, the federal government named the northern spotted owl a threatened species. The designation curbed private logging on millions of acres of federally owned timberland in the West. Almost completely surrounded by the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, Hayfork was left with few trees to log. Sierra Pacific pulled the plug on the Hayfork mill in 1996, wiping out about 150 jobs and a payroll that totaled about $5 million annually. More than 100 other jobs in restaurants, bars and other businesses that depended on the workers disappeared, too.

Hayfork went into a deep swoon. Enrollment in the schools plunged by almost half, as the population shrank to 1,800 from 2,600 in 1990, mostly because workers with families left town.

It’s been about four years since I drove through Hayfork, and it was pretty sad. But as you can see, it was the Moonbats behind the Spotted Owl Lie that killed the little town. A lie? you ask. Yes, a lie. A knee jerk reaction to Tree Hugging Moonbats whose only plan was to shut down the logging industry. Just as the Global Warming Lies have been spread to benefit a few, the Spotted Owl Lies did the same. Algore’s lies are coming to light now, hopefully in time to stop the damage, but it’s too late for many who’s lives were ruined by the spotted owl lie.

Environmentalists are quick to lecture the rest of us about the ways of nature. Don’t clean the dead trees off the forest floor; they’re natural. Cattle and horses on the range aren’t native, so let the grizzlies and wolves devour them; it’s natural. Man isn’t part of the ecology, so lock him out of vast areas of land; it’s natural.

It is interesting to note how the “natural” argument applies only when it is used to impose the radical environmental agenda. A case in point is the Northern spotted owl.
Timber Companies Ruined

Spotted owls, we were told a decade ago, were disappearing because big bad timber companies were cutting down old-growth forests. So the environmental movement rushed to the forests, hugged the trees, and issued news releases to decry the evils of the logging industry. Save the owl. Save the trees. Kill the timber industry.

Of course, that was exactly the point. Kill the timber industry. As a result of the hysteria to save the “endangered” owls, U.S. timber sales were reduced by 80 to 90 percent, forcing saw mills to close, loggers to go broke, and the literal disappearance of entire towns that depended on the industry.

The federal crackdown on the industry caused a shift in U.S. domestic lumber supplies to foreign sources. In short, American industry suffered in the name of protecting the spotted owl.

Turns out, the whole spotted owl scare was unfounded.
Barred Owl Was Culprit

According to a new government draft plan to save the species, scientists are no longer saying logging is the great threat to the spotted owl.

“The draft recovery plan recognizes the primary threat to northern spotted owls as competition with barred owls,” the report says. According to the report, barred owls are less selective about the habitat they use and the prey they feed upon and are out-competing northern spotted owls for habitat and food, causing the spotted owl’s decline.

In fact, for the entire decade since the issue emerged on the political scene, the property rights and land use movements have been reporting the fact that the Northern spotted owl is only a sub-species of Mexican spotted owls, which are not endangered at all.

It was no secret that the spotted owl did not need old-growth forests to survive, since spotted owls were found living under bridges and in McDonald’s signs. What it needed, like any other species, was a good food source. Now we know it was undercut by another owl–a completely natural occurrence.
Movement Built on Lie

What was accomplished during the 10-year fight, besides the destruction of an entire industry and the economic welfare of the people who worked in it?

What was accomplished was the regrettable establishment of a very radical and dangerous political agenda called the environmental movement. Its power is now so great that no politician dares to oppose it.

Yet that power, we now know for certain, was built on a lie. Some in the movement have even candidly admitted that if they hadn’t had the spotted owl they would have invented something like it to drive their agenda.

In fact they did invent it, and the purpose was to destroy the timber industry and private property rights. They called it an environmental emergency.
Government Still Clueless

Now the truth has come out. So, will the same federal government that rushed to impose harsh treatment of innocent property owners and industry now roll back those stifling regulations and let freedom breathe? Of course not. Agendas are agendas, regardless of the facts.

So instead, after the nation spent millions of dollars to destroy private property rights, the government plans to spend $200 million more on a “barred owl removal plan” in order to save the spotted owl from its natural competitor.

And as usual when a new government debacle is rolled out, there is always an emergency to drive the policy. According to Ren Loheofener, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pacific Region, “Because the range and numbers of barred owls are expanding rapidly, our effectiveness in addressing this threat depends on immediate action.”
No Need for Panic

Here’s an immediate action sane folks could recommend: Leave the barred owls alone to do what comes natural to them.

If the spotted owl can’t keep up–then good riddance. It’s been used to cause enough pain, and obviously its time is up.

After all, it’s a natural process. Species come and go. We’ve got plenty of Mexican spotted owls to play with if we get homesick for them.

Of course, the final chapter is yet to be written. If the new “recovery plan” is successful, it won’t be long before the environmental movement has a new emergency–man’s wanton destruction of the barred owl. Creating false environmental disasters just comes natural for some people.

This is a rather long way to go to make this comparison, but I wanted to make sure everyone knows the facts of the spotted owl movement.
The very same tactics are being used to promote Global Warming. The goals are the same, except instead of shutting down one industry, they now want to shut down America. And as a byproduct of that, their is a lot of money to be made by a few (algore) dishonest snakeoil salesmen.

I’m glad to hear Hayfork is making a small comeback, though fifty five jobs is a long way from the thousands that were supported by the logging industry. The rest of the Hayfork story is here Wall Street Journal

This is what happens when people Drink The Kool-Aid, and don’t listen to facts. Heartland Institute

Related Article: Spotted Owl Lie Killing Another Town