Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who became the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut. He pens a comprehensive article in today's Australian about the danger of the coming ice age:
All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.
Chapman admits that one year of cooling does not a trend make, but then he turns to sunspot activity. According to SOHO, the latest cycle of sunspots (No. 24) failed to begin on schedule (sometime shortly after March of last year).
The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.
The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.
Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.
Again, Chapman admits that there may not be a causal connection between last year's precipitous temperature drop and No. 24's late start. But given the grim consequences of another mini-ice age, he warns us to start planning now. Lack of action could prove fatal:
The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.
The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.
By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining.
Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000 centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time.
Global warming we could deal with. In fact, it would open up more farm land and expand the habitable area on the Earth.
But an ice age is another thing altogether.
So please, for the future of humanity, everyone go out and buy a huge (non-hybrid) SUV and fire up the smudge pots. In the meantime, I think I'll invest in some acreage on the equator. Hmm, I wonder what a small plantation in the Brazilian rain forest goes for these days.
Last month, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that supermarkets will be given a year to end their reliance on "single use" plastic bags. After that they face a fine of 5p or more for each plastic bag they give to customers.
Further, in an effort to force retailers to "go green", if the shop charges customers for plastic bags they will be required to publish how they use the proceeds. This measure is designed to put public pressure on the retailers to use the money for environmental causes.
Brown, of course, is from the Labour Party which occupies the point to the left of what passes for the middle of the political spectrum outside of the US. In other words, he would be perfectly happy cozying up to the Pelosis and Nadars of the US.
Conservatives responded to Brown's announcement by showcasing Labour's hypocrisy: over the last 2 years the government has purchased almost 1.3 million plastic bags emblazoned with departmental logos at a cost of over 91 million pounds. Eric Pickles, shadow communities and local government secretary, said:
“While Gordon Brown lectures the public on the environment, his own ministers are fuelling Britain’s throw-away culture.”
But it actually much worse than mere hypocrisy. Please read on.
The campaign to "ban the bag" was recently fueled by photographs in the UK Daily Mail. One showed a sea turtle swimming along side some plastic bags which the article claims:
Cut to the haunting image of a sea turtle, thousands of miles away, struggling through the deep ocean waters as discarded plastic bags wrap themselves around its flippers and body.
The turtle hardly seems entangled, but such is the rhetoric associated with this campaign. Worse, a second photograph shows a turtle apparently eating a bag.
These majestic animals are dying in alarming numbers because they mistake the flimsy translucent bags - which could in theory come from British supermarkets - for jellyfish, a key element of their diet.
The article had more photos, and even more inflammatory rhetoric. In response, environmental groups and publicity-seeking celebrities have flocked to embrace the campaign.
But what is the truth behind these claims?
First, Brown has long called plastic bags "one of the most visible symbols of environmental waste." Yet UK's DEFRA (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs) website unequivocally contradicts this "fact" with real facts:
Second is the "single use" component of the war on plastic retail bags. The aforementioned DEFRA site states that "80% of UK consumers currently re-use their plastic bags at least once for a variety of purposes – such as bin liners, nappy sacks or lunch bags." Confirming this is the experience in Ireland: when a tax was placed on plastic bags in Ireland there was a massive increase of 300 to 500% in the sale of plastic refuse bags and bin liners! Note that these bags are thicker and heavier than plastic retail bags (see the next point below) and therefor the "green footprint" is much heavier. [Note to politicians: ever hear of the law of unintended consequences?]
Third, there are a whole lot of reasons to continue using plastic bags at grocery stores, from reducing energy to fighting shoplifting. And did you know that today's plastic bags use 70% less plastic than they did 20 years ago, yet are just as strong?
Fourth, the "science" used to support the fight against plastic is really the result of a a misrepresentation of a scientific study. That is, a boldfaced lie:
The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.
Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to “plastic bags”.
The figure was latched on to by conservationists as proof that the bags were killers. For four years the “typo” remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing “plastic bags” with “plastic debris”. But they admitted: “The actual numbers of animals killed annually by plastic bag litter is nearly impossible to determine.”
In a postscript to the correction they admitted that the original Canadian study had referred to fishing tackle, not plastic debris, as the threat to the marine environment.
Regardless, the erroneous claim has become the keystone of a widening campaign to demonise plastic bags.
That's right, there is no scientific evidence to support the outrageous claims of the granola-chomping, mantra-chanting, tree-sitting crowd (and a lot to discount it), yet the British government has embraced the plastic bag myth. As a result British taxpayer dollars pounds will be wasted and retail prices will rise, all for nothing.
Sounds a lot like the governmental embrace of global warming, doesn't it?
From IBD, Waving The Flag Of Fear:
One day after the United Nations issued a doomsday report on global warming, it admits it has grossly exaggerated the seriousness of the AIDS problem. The cycle of fear-mongering at the U.N. continues. . . .
Remember the 1980s, when we were told that AIDS was a nondiscriminatory disease destined to wipe out large segments of the population and bring untold ruin to humanity?
When Life magazine declared on its cover in 1985 that "Now No One Is Safe From AIDS"? When the new Black Plague, worse than the first, was upon us? Who could forget Oprah Winfrey's dire warning that a fifth of heterosexuals would be dead by 1990? . . .
Global warming fear-mongering is likely to fall by the wayside in the next decade or so when it becomes obvious that the charlatans have been wrong. That won't be the end, however; global warming will be replaced by a wild exaggeration that sounds even more threatening.
Read it all, remembering ZPG from the 70's because the Earth would be overrun with people if we didn't stop having babies, the "we'll be out of oil by the year 2000" from the 60's, and every other crackpot idea you've heard from the alarmists.
Whoa, here's a poll to make you think:
Almost two-thirds of the world's people say there must be urgent action to tackle global warming, a poll for the BBC World Service showed on Tuesday.
Then again, two-thirds of the world's people are illiterate, live in huts and cook over dung fires. Listen to them on matters of global policy? I don't think so. *
*Before I get flamed, this was literary exaggeration to make a point. In actuality, a report was recently released that claimed that for the first time in history half the world population is urban. But just because they live in the "big city", it doesn't mean that they aren't ignorant savages. [Heh]
Somebody needs to call Al Gore. Maybe he can explain this:
The 2007 hurricane season may be less severe than forecast due to cooler-than-expected water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, private forecaster WSI Corp said on Tuesday.
How can this be? Isn't Bush still in charge wreaking havoc?
Tennessee representative Stacey Campfield authors the best resolution I've ever seen.
This is an absolute must read!
Courtesy of NASA, a historical perspective on global warming. In the following graphs, the dotted line represents the present global average temperature of about 15° C (59° F) [which is far too cold for my taste].
It looks like we are coming out of an ice age, an event that happens about once every 100,000 years.
A closer look at just the last ten thousand years or so (modern times, in geological terms) reinforces this perspective.
Note that while the birth of man predates the beginning of the Holocene epoch by more than a hundred thousand years, it is this period that saw modern man's transition from a tribal savage to the builder of civilizations. The natural warming cycle created an environment that was favorable to Homo sapiens sapiens' success.
Zooming in even closer shows that even with our huge belching factories and miles of chugging SUVs, we haven't managed to bring up the temperature to when dudes used to ride around in steel suits and heavy wool underwear:
The most recent small drop in average temperature caused the Little Ice Age of 1500-1700 AD, which history describes. Mountain glaciers advanced in Europe and rivers like the Thames in England froze solid, which doesn't happen now.
Hmmm, I wonder if the fact that the sun is warming again up has anything to do with our little temperature "problem". I heard a rumor that the sun somehow influences our weather.
Image from Global Warming Art.com, which notes:
It is widely believed that the low solar activity during the Maunder Minimum and earlier periods may be among the principle causes of the Little Ice Age. Similarly, the Modern Maximum is partly responsible for global warming, especially the temperature increases between 1900 and 1950. Residual warming due to the sustained high level of activity since 1950 is believed responsible for 16 to 36% of recent warming.
Hat Tip to Say Anything, who quips:
It’s almost like the globe has been getting warmer and colder for hundreds of thousands of years with or without humans being around to cause problems.
Weird huh?
Update: Yet another scientist questions the models used for calculating man's impact, saying that cosmic rays have a larger impact than previously believed. Hat Tip to Bill Hobbs, who links to yet another explanation.
So says Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) in remarks concerning the results of a report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) set to be published next February:
A United Nations study due for release early next year will reportedly lower estimates of mankind's impact on the earth's climate by 25 percent, a development a leading climate change skeptic in the U.S. Senate says will pour "cold water" on "global warming alarmism."
Welcome to the club, Senator. Those of us with an understanding of the scientific method have been sceptics since the beginning.
An auto research firm collected detailed data for two years and was able to calculate the real cost of a vehicle, converting it to "dollars per lifetime mile" to make it easy to understand and compare vehicles.
They found these to be the Energy Cost per Mile:
The most expensive car to operate is the luxurious Maybach from Mercedes Benz, costing the owner an average of $11.58 per mile (not surprising given the $300K+ purchase price). The cheapest is the ungliest Toyota ever built, the Scion xB, at just $0.48 per mile.
We believe this kind of data is important in a consumer's selection of transportation. Basing purchase decisions solely on fuel economy or vehicle size does not get to the heart of the energy usage issue.
Ah yes, one of those "feel good" decisions that doesn't turn out so well in the long run. Yet lots of liberals are happily humming along in their tiny hybrids. (Personally, I'd take a Hummer, but not that wimpy H3 — I want the real thing.)
Hat tip to NRO's Jonah Goldberg, who notes:
It seems to me that pro-hybrid car types would make the argument that they're trying to create a market for new technologies which would bring these energy costs down and would help wean us of our "addiction" to foreign oil. Both of those are good arguments but this study — and this is just one study — does seem to undercut some of the sanctimony we occassionally hear about how hybrids are good for the environment right now.
What pollutes more than aerospace manufacturing, apparel, hotels and semiconductor manufacturing? According to a new university study, making movies pollutes:
Special effects explosions, idling vehicles, teams of workers building monumental sets and other aspects of the Hollywood movie business contribute to Los Angeles' poor air quality, a university study finds. The film and television industry and associated activities make a larger contribution to air pollution in the five-county Los Angeles region than almost all five other sectors researched, according to the study by the University of California at Los Angeles. ... Only petroleum manufacturing produced more emissions.
And while some limousine liberals drive trendy electric cars, don't look for any of them to insist on making green movies that do away with huge, expensive sets and special effects.
Remember the hysterical rantings of "scientists" and "experts" in the aftermath of Katrina that the heavy hurricane season was just the beginning? That human occupation and thoughtless exploitation of the planet was causing global warming and so hurricanes would continue to batter our coastlines in escalating numbers and increased ferocity?
There was even the "Bush is to blame" delirium happening.
Flash forward to today:
Tropical storm Paul has been upgraded to hurricane status as it moves towards Baja California.
Paul, as in "P", as in the 16th letter of the alphabet.
Meanwhile, in the Atlantic, what we we on? Isaac? That would be nine storms so far this year. Anyone even hear anything about Alberto? Beryl? Chris, Debby, Enesto, Florence, Gordon or Helene?
I didn't think so. Those would be the names of the eight previous Atlantic storms this year.
This time last year we were in the midst of Wilma.
This hurricane season isn't over yet, but yeah, the "experts" strike out again. Heard anything from the Gorebot recently?
Environmentalists, repeatedly rejected by the democratic process and unable to pass the Kyoto Protocol or their radical agenda, are doing what liberals invariably do when defeated in the marketplace of ideas: turning to the courts.I would think of something clever in the "what's next" category, but how can I? There's nothing left! Human waste, farts, and now breath are all considered pollution by these morons.On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to review Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, in which environmental lobbies and twelve activist states petition the Court to label everyday carbon dioxide a "pollutant" and compel the EPA to regulate it.
That's right – carbon dioxide, the clear, odorless, non-toxic, natural substance that we exhale with every breath and that plants require to flourish, is now a "pollutant," according to environmentalists. Plaintiffs thus seek to impose the Kyoto Protocol via litigation, superseding the electoral process and imposing tremendous costs upon the American economy.
Technorati Tags: Kyoto Protocol, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Tree-hugging Whackos, Enviroweenies, Environmentalists.
“The very aggressive way we went about it - I have to fault myself on this, because I’m the one that directed it, turned out to be a much more serious problem than the oil was. We were killing more things - I mean we were really killing things with the steaming hot water that we were blasting on the shoreline; the oil wasn’t anywhere near that effective at causing things to be killed, so that all of our sites were much better off for not having been cleaned up for a period of years.So why do we need groups like ELF when we have the U.S. government that bows down to extremist tree hugging hysteria?“After a decade, things began to level out to where you weren’t able to tell which area had been cleaned up and which hadn’t; for a period of ten years though, the places that were cleaned up were in a lot worse shape.”
Technorati Tags: Oil Spills, Environmental Terrorism, Environmental Extremism, Tree Hugging Hysteria, Exxon Valdez.
So the next time you pass a hippie, kick his ass, because he's more to blame for high gas prices than Exxon is.Indeed, after years of obstructing every means of energy production, the Democrats have suddenly embraced the issue because it's another "blame Bush" mallet. Leave it to The American Thinker to remind us:
Oh really?Wizbang! also weighs in on this topic.
- This is the party that stopped the nation building nuclear plants.
- This is the party that toyed with carbon taxes.
- This is the party of Al Gore, now right in the middle of publicizing An Inconvenient Truth, "by far the most terrifying movie you will ever see."
- This is the party that won't let oil companies prospect for oil off the left and right coasts.
- This is the party whose activists prevented the US from building new petroleum refineries.
- This is the party that filibusters against drilling for oil in an arctic wilderness that just happens to be right next to a major oil pipeline with spare capacity.
What is disturbing is when Republicans act like Democrats and try to blame big oil, urging investigations. That's because they don't want you to know that they, our political servants desperate to hang on to their positions, are to blame. The are responsible for decades of poor energy policies and millions of dollars wasted in uneconomical "alternate energy" research. Yet tax revenues from the oil industry has continued to climb.
FACT: "Big oil" makes just nine cents profit on a gallon of gas today.
FACT: "Big oil" has averaged just 5.8 cents profit on a gallon of gas over the last five years. [HT Glen Dean via Gut Rumbles]
FACT: Government taxes rake in an average of 46 cents on every gallon of gas, 18.4 cents of which goes to the federal government.
FACT: "Big oil" paid in taxes more than three times what they earned in profits from 1977 to 2004:
According to Department of Energy data, from 1977 to 2004, federal and state governments extracted $397 billion by taxing the profits of the largest oil companies and an additional $1.1 trillion in taxes at the pump. In today's dollars, that's $2.2 trillion - enough to buy a Toyota Prius for every household in the nation.FACT: From 1977 to 2004, major U.S. oil companies' domestic profits totaled just $643 billion, while state and federal taxes on gasoline and diesel totaled an astounding $1.34 trillion [HT to TaxProf Blog]. As the Tax Foundation points out, profits taken by "big oil" are highly volatile, while taxes garnered at the gas pump has never retreated:
Click for larger image
FACT: The blending of ethanol mandated by the federal government is a fawning concession to farmers at the very real expense of the American consumer. Ethanol:
FACT: The Unites States has the most complex regulations for blending gasoline on the planet.
FACT: China may be drill 50 miles off the Florida coast, as may be Spain, Canada and others by working with Cuba, yet exploration and development is forbidden off the Florida coast:
FACT: Mexico has discovered ten billion barrels of crude 60 miles off the Mexican coast, yet American companies are forbidden to search hundreds of miles of our coastline.
What have we done to deserve such poor treatment at the hands of our elected servants?
Other random related notes:
And oh, by the way, Exxon's "excessive" earnings were 7 percent higher in the first quarter -- exactly the same percentage growth as the 7 percent announced by media company E.W. Scripps Co. And former Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll recently noted that the average newspaper profit margin remains 19.5 percent.Is it time for an “excess profits tax” on media owners?
Technorati Tags: Gas Prices, Big Oil, Energy Policy, Energy, Gasoline, Free Markets, Democrat Obstructionism, Screwed by the Government.
Fifteen of the deaths occured in western Tennessee as tornados ripped through five counties near Memphis (Dyer, Carroll, Haywood, Gibson and Fayette) — but not Shelby County where Memphis is located. Eight deaths were from Gibson County alone where 1,200 buildings were damaged. It is also where the capricious storm showed its nature:
"By the time the (tornado) sirens started going off, it was at our back door," Sisk said today. "I didn't hear a train sound, I heard a roaring."She and the children ran into a closet.
"The next thing I knew, everything was falling apart," Sisk said.
The tornado blew apart the home and flung the Sisks into their yard, where they huddled in the grass until it passed over. Sisk said she watched as the tornado hit and damaged the Jimmy Dean Foods sausage plant across the street.
Nothing remained of Sisk's wood-frame home today except for the concrete steps.
A nearby house was destroyed, and Sisk said she had been told the elderly couple who lived there had died. Another neighbor's home was sitting on the lawn, blown about 30 feet off its foundation.
Virtually every building in Marmaduke, Arkansas suffered damage, with an astounding 50% of them destroyed. Half the town has been evacuated over safety concerns of such as gas leaks.The National Weather Service reports that every county in southwest Ohio suffered damage. Christian County in Kentucky has declared a state of emergency as rescue crews struggle to clear roadways and restore power.
Softball sized hail was reported in several places across Arkansas. About 300,000 people remain without power today, with businesses closed and families trying to pick up their lives again.
Technorati Tags: Thunderstorms, Hail, Tornados, Storms, Storm Damage, Weather.
They produce about 10 to 30 percent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. ...So even as European countries consistently fail to meet their commitments for cutting carbon dioxide, plants are making certain we keep having warm winters in America. But wait, there's more!"Significant methane emissions from both intact plants and detached leaves were observed ... in the laboratory and in the field," Dr Frank Keppler and his team said in a report in the journal Nature.
Methane, which is produced by city rubbish dumps, coal mining, flatulent animals, rice cultivation and peat bogs, is one of the most potent greenhouse gases in terms of its ability to trap heat.
Concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere have almost tripled in the last 150 years. About 600 million tonnes worldwide are produced annually.
The scientists said their finding is important for understanding the link between global warming and a rise in greenhouse gases.
Keppler and his colleagues discovered that living plants emit 10 to 100 times more methane than dead plants.Q: What has changed in the last 150 years? A: America has been becoming more green! Yep, the Indians must have known what they were doing when they burned land to clear it for farming.Scientists had previously thought that plants could only emit methane in the absence of oxygen.
The answer to stopping global warming is obvious — cut down the rain forests and do more strip mining!
The economic repercussions will be enormous. A study released by the International Council for Capital Formation (iccfglobal.org) this month looked at the impact on four European countries — Germany, Spain, the U.K. and Italy — of purchasing emissions credits. The firm conducting the study, Global Insight, assumed that the cost of buying the credits would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher energy prices.On a related note, a study shows that there has been a 30% reduction in the currents that carry warm water past Europe. These warm currents give Europe it's balmy weather and it is feared that the reduction will plunge the continent into a mini-ice age.The result — an average decline of almost two percentage points in annual GDP for the four countries. Since these nations are currently growing at less than 1 percent a year, they would be plunged into recession. Jobs and capital would go elsewhere; total annual employment losses in the four countries would be 1.5 million.
Of course, the article goes on to say that scientists are unsure "if the change is temporary or signals a long-term trend", that the "team's findings leave a lot unexplained" and that "nobody is clear on what has gone wrong."
In other words, scientists are still unable to come up with climate models that explain current or past conditions. Yet there are those that want to base national economic policy on them.
And by the way, the country that was the target of global criticism when we rejected the Kyoto insanity is the country that is doing the best:
Meanwhile, even though it hasnt ratified Kyoto, the United States is doing better than countries that have (including, over the past three years, many in Europe), in large part because market forces are driving businesses and individuals to use energy more efficiently.
The U.S. is pushing its markets-and-technology approach through the creation of multilateral pacts such as the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate set up in July by the U.S. and Australia - two Kyoto boycotters - plus India, China, South Korea and Japan.Kyoto won't expire until 2013, but countries are already looking for ways out.A senior official of the U.S. embassy in Ottawa said a Canadian federal cabinet minister "indicated interest" in Canada participating in this partnership. ...
"This will help encourage the U.S. to take part in discussions about the post-Kyoto regime," said one Canadian official speaking on a promise of anonymity. ...
But a report this week to Prime Minister Paul Martin praised the Asia-Pacific partnership "as a very compelling model for the kind of framework agreement that Canada could explore" and recommends Canada give "serious consideration" to joining."
In other news of global warming, Europe is in the grips of an unprecedented cold snap:
A sudden winter freeze gripped parts of northern Europe, with heavy snowfalls cutting power, cancelling football matches and spreading air and road traffic chaos. ...A Duesseldorf airport spokesman said 36 flights had to be redirected and 25 were cancelled.
"I have been working at the airport for 11 years and I cannot remember something like this ever happening before," spokesman Torsten Hiermann said.
Fun Global Warming Facts:
The fact is that while the North American continent emits about 1.6 billion metric tons of carbon every year, North American carbon sinks actually absorb 1.7 billion tons of atmospheric carbon every year. North America is therefore a net consumer of carbon dioxide. The same is not true of the European nations, who essentially see their emissions cleaned up by North American or other carbon sinks.(More from MnKurmudge&DCKid.)
Federal officials say the plan, effective in about a month, is designed to reduce the number of what is often called the nation`s 'newest urban pigeons.' ...Yipee! A nice, fat Canadian goose for Christmas!The plan will allow farmers, property owners and public health officials to kill geese by various methods, including hunting, with state approval but without federal permits, the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer said.
Truth is, this is a rare success story in the long and controversial life of the Endangered Species Act. The list of endangered and threatened species is currently contains 1,161 entries. Only 18 have ever been delisted and 9 went extinct anyway.
With 600 bears, Yellowstone has the largest population of grizzlies in the lower 48 states. On the other hand, Alaska has over 30,000 grizzlies.
But Louisa Wilcox, who directs the Natural Resources Defense Council's wild bears project, said delisting would place the grizzlies' critical habitat in jeopardy. The bears range over nearly 9 million acres in and around the national park, she said, but the administration's proposal only covers a 6 million-acre habitat.Rhode Island (with a population of over 1 million people) is 1.28 million acres so the administration is protecting an area that is over 4½ times the size of a state! Environmentalists say this isn't enough, grizzlies need an area the size of New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island, Washington DC — and another Delaware!
The problem is the bear population has grown large enough and is ranging far enough that that elk hunters are starting to experience "conflicts". Evironmentalists, of course, would say that hunters shouldn't be hunting. Red State Americans disagree because we know what to do when man and predators come into conflict.
Speaking of conflict, pets are being carried off by coyotes in Studio City, a suburb of LA.
NBC4's Robert Kovacik said the incidents serve as an important reminder to residents to keep their pets indoors and not to put pet food outside.Animal Control authorities also recommend that people carry something to make a loud noise while walking their dogs, in case they need to scare off an attacking coyote.
That loud noise idea sounds great. I'd recommend a Kimber .45 Compact Carry. If the noise doesn't scare a coyote off, I'm sure the lead projectile entering his brain pan would take care of the problem.In fact, being a Red State American, if I lived in Studio City I'd probably finally let AlphaWife get the dog she's always talking about. Something tasty looking, like a little weiner dog. I'd be glad to walk the little fella in coyote country as long as I had one of my noisemakers. I even have a name for the little guy — "Bait".
Caribou herds in Alaska’s existing North Slope drilling areas have actually increased in size since drilling began. Caribou around the Prudhoe Bay oilfield increased from about 3,000 in the 1970s to over 32,000 today. The Porcupine herd, which occupies the ANWR areas currently blocked from drilling, decreased in the same period. If they were truly concerned about the caribou, logically the Sierra Club should be demanding more drilling, not less.
Heh! How true.
And it seems that the socialist "gas cap" designed to control prices isn't doing what it was supposed to do:
After the cap was imposed, the volatility of Hawai'i gas prices increased ten-fold. During that time period that Hawai'i prices traversed a 75-cent range, the national average moved within a 44-cent range.
Most models of global warming indicate that the Greenland ice might melt within thousands of years if warming continues.Oh dear, time to buy real estate on high ground!
