I grew up in the Army and I used to think the Army Corps of Engineers was a cool name for a cool organization. (I don't really know if the the Corps is actually affiliated with the Army, do you?) Anyway, then I grew up and heard of stories like this one involving a Habitat for Humanity project in Florida.

Discuss

I didn't see the opinion that this letter is in response to, but I sure do like what the writer has to say about forests.

Discuss

What does sustainable development mean to you? Henry Lamb of EcoLogic has an opinion worth reading.

Discuss

The Humane Society is pretty mainstream, right? Are you sure?

Discuss

Yet another article on my favorite topic, eco-terrorism! I think they are a real menace and we need to support the FBI in its efforts to track these nut cases down and stop them before somebody gets hurt or killed.

Discuss

Greens want a new State Lands Commissioner. I went to college with the current land commissioner, Mike Anable. He is a good man and I consider him a friend. Do what you can to show support for him.

Discuss

One of the complaints from environmentalists that I hear a lot is that we are developing over all of the wilderness areas. How about this fact.... 46% of land on Earth is undeveloped. So let's see, in 2 million years humans have developed just over half of the usable land. Doesn't seem to me that we will be running out any time soon.

Discuss

To both of my faithful readers! (hehe) Sick children will keep me from posting for the next couple of days. Stay tuned....

An environmentalist complaining about other environmentalists? The author of
this article from the Denver Post has a wonderful point about the environmentalists who are trying to get rid of ranching.

Discuss

Aah... the joys of the holiday season. You know, like when PETA compares turkeys to terrorists. Yes, you read that right, turkeys are terrorists!

Discuss

What is the real motivation behind the "What would Jesus Drive?" campaign? Here's some very interesting speculation from Rich Lowry.

Discuss

Here's the headline Environmentals brace for Bush 'onslaught'. Read on....

Discuss

One of the best pieces on
old growth and the "natural state" of forests that I have seen in a long, long time! An absolute must read!

Discuss

I don't know about you but I just love it when PETA gets strung up by their own petard. Here's a story from CNS News to illustrate. Also check out this ad that is running or is going to be run in L.A.

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"What would Jesus do?" In principle that's a good thing. But this just goes too far. Picking your car this way?

Discuss

I know you've heard of the Kyoto Protocols, but did you know that even developing countries are rejecting them? What? Its not just the evil old United States that doesn't agree with them? Get the story here.

Discuss

Another land grab in the name of an endangered species? The government may declare more than one fifth of Hawaii critical habitat for 255 endangered plants and 2 insects. The most intriguing part of this is that one of the plants is almost gone already. There are only 9 specimens left! Last time I checked that is hardly enough to keep a species viable. Read about it for yourself from this Washington Times story.

Discuss

A new look! Enjoy!

Good science is important, no matter which side you are on. Especially when it involves an issue as big as Klamath Basin became last summer.

Discuss

Sustainable development. That is a very clever title that they have come up with. It sounds good on the surface. We all want things that are sustainable and development is usually a good thing. But something got twisted when those two terms were combined. If you weren't convinced that the UN is an enemy of private land ownership and is, at the least, working against the freedoms we enjoy in this country, read this 
letter to the CATO Institute, it may just change your mind.

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I know that I set this weblog up to discuss issues concerning the environment and I guess I could tie this into the environment with just a little bit of stretching, but I found the most amazing story about Scott Ritter. Remember him? He of the change of heart weapons inpector who addressed the Iraqi parliament. He gave a speech the other day, you MUST read this!

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Two items today.

Check out the Discussion Boards! They have been dramatically updated and upgraded!

Peta. Are they a terrorist group or not? Whatever they are they have way to much influence, even when they are not doing anything. An ad run by a group opposing PETA shows a picture of the fire in Vail that was set by ELF. Turns out PETA provided some funding to ELF. Well, the people in Vail are a little upset. Read the story.

Whales or the Navy? Which one do you think the environmentalists prefer?

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Another political note. Republicans won on Tuesday, some Democrats won on Tuesday. What happened to the Green Party? Here's two links you might find enlightening. One, from plastic.com says the Greens went from being worth a "squat to a squat and a half." I found that amusing. (smile) The other is the article that led to the quote on plastic; its from the Washington Post. Enjoy.


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We won on Tuesday! An historic vistory, but, is the battle over? Not by a long shot, let the demonization of conservatives begin! This article from the Desert Sun talks about how the Republicans will work to destroy the environment. To be fair, it does mention a couple of good things about one Republican and slaps one Democrat on the wrist, but the title, Power shift worries environmentalists tells it all.

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More on ELF. A television station in Pittsburgh sent out their investigative team. Here is the story that resulted. Most interesting to me is the link from the story to a response to some questions sent to ELF by the TV station. Fanatics of all types scare me.

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If you don't know already, I live in the Southwest and we had a bunch of big fires this summer, want proof? Just look at this
map. Well now it seems as if the "BIG" media folks are starting to take notice of the fires. Science is starting to show that wildfires have an effect on global warming. (Remember, global warming is a good thing) The problem is they are trying to put all of the blame somewhere other than where it belongs; with the environmental groups. Groups like the Sierra Club, who have hogtied the Forest Service for years and forced a policy of "hands off" management of the forests through years of
litigation. We all know the Forest Service can do a better job, but if they could spend their time managing the forests rather than managing the lawyers they need to defend themselves....

Sorry, the link for "where it belongs" is to a pay site from the Albuquerque Journal

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Here's a good one about an environmental law you've probably never even heard of. It even predates the ESA.

I don't want to sound cliched but Al Qaeda is not the only terrorist group we need to worry about. Have you heard of ELF? They split from Earth First! because Earth First wasn't radical enough. They used to just threaten buildings but that has changed, as shown by the evidence in this article.

Education is worthless if you don't use it!! Get out and vote!!!

Missing the forest for the trees?

We have more trees now than has ever been recorded in the United States but environmental whack jobs are still killing themselves trying to save the righteous and venerable old growth trees, while Third World countries, starving for cash, are busily chopping their forests down.

Environmental groups find themselves in a bind, you know how hard it is for them to admit that the US may actually be on the right path, they now find themselves in a position where they may have to criticize one their favorites, a downtrodden (by the US probably) Third World country.

Read this...
"Even as activists succeed in getting the U.S. government to declare more and more forestland off limits to tree harvesting, America is destroying more forestland than ever before." What? We are destroying more forests? Not really, although it is our fault. (isn't it always?)
Here's the rest of the article.

One of the environmental movement's big bogeymen is nuclear power and the spectre of fallout from damaged nuclear powerplants. I remember Three Mile Island and the hysteria it caused (including that Jane Fonda movie, The China Syndrome), well it turns out that the TMI accident has not had an effect on the cancer rates of people living in the area. What makes this most interesting to me is where the story comes from; none other than CBS News. Here is the website of CBS' source.

Of course, they did leave themselves an out in the last couple of paragraphs. I guess they don't want the bogeyman to go away completely.

Excellent, excellent, excellent! I don't know what else to say about the environment links on the NCPA website.

Do you find it hard to breathe sometimes? I mean, do you find it hard to catch your breath after hearing or reading another hysterical story about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket? Well, have faith because the world is getting cleaner, its just not being reported! Here's a good example from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Comment?

Here's a quote from a story the National Center for Policy Analysis posted concerning climate change and the UN. "The United Nations is determined to browbeat the United States into signing the Kyoto protocol on global warming, and is employing some pretty suspect means to achieve that end, critics say." That's right the Kyoto protocol is rearing its ugly head again, and none other than Kofi Annan is jumping on the United States bashing bandwagon. Never mind that scientifically the Kyoto agreements are about as strong as a wet noodle, that doesn't seem to matter...Here's some commentary from the Washington Post.

Again, silly me. I thought the UN was for the good of ALL nations. Silly me.

Rational ignorance. Sounds like an excuse my 7th grade students would come up with when I ask where their homework is, but its actually something we all practice. Here is some sound advice about rational ignorance, its ramifications, "Yet many wonder how a well-intentioned law morphed into the single most powerful way to control land use and destroy people's property rights and livelihoods. One answer is that ten bankrolled preservationists advancing a regulatory strategy can outsmart ninety who aren't paying attention any time," and how it applies to property rights. This comes from the Anchorage Daily News and is a well timed piece of advice.

There's a new report from the UN that says mountains are in danger from farming. The report actually details 7 things that they think may be harming mountain ecosystems but the story chooses to highlight farming. What, farmer's are bad? I thought they were good guys, seeing as how everybody (yes, even the UN types) need food! Guess I have been misled.

Here's the UN report.

Here's an interesting thing from the Wildlife Conservation Society. I haven't had a chance to examine it in depth yet, but here it is, take a look. Map that shows the impact of humans on the globe.

Let me know what you think on the Discussion Boards.
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I wonder sometimes, is the evironmental movement is really concerned with the right things? For instance, wouldn't the entire world be a better environment if there were no terrorists? Well, it seems that the California gnatcatcher and trees are more important than properly trained soldiers. The Marines in Afghanistan don't know how to dig foxholes. Why? Because they can't practice at Camp Pendleton because it might disturb the environment. The Army, has had to place 250 foot "buffer zones" around the trees at Fort Hood to protect any potential nesting sites for the birds. That makes it really hard to practice field manuevers. We need to decide who's more important American soldiers or trees and birds

Are you cold? Winter is approaching and apparently its global warming's fault! A scientist has claimed that global warming could cause of all things, an ice age! Read the story at CNS News and then go to the discussion board to leave comments.

I downloaded a news reader to well, you know, read the news. One of the news feeds that came pre-installed was Green Nature. I clicked on one of the stories and went to their website. Looks pretty innocuous on the surface. That is until you dig just a little, notice I said just a little. If you click on the Election 2002 link you will find a series of articles on the election, one stood out in particular for me. "Bush Environment Record" Interesting, until you see, surprise, surprise, that the information on the President's environmental record comes straight from the Democratic Policy Committee! Hmm, wonder if they'll give him a favorable review. That's just the start, go see for yourself.

Some people are just plain stupid!

Finally, back to today's post. Huh, back to today's post? Some weirdness happened earlier and I lost some stuff.

I really hate to sound paranoid and the idea behind the United Nations seems like a good thing, and preserving and protecting wildlife is a good thing (I do have a degree in Horticulture, you know) BUT I wonder if the UN and the people who work there and with them really understand how their decisions affect the people they are supposedly charged with helping. It seems to me that the plants and animals are being put first. Here is a great example of what I am talking about.
Look at this map and pay special attention to the dominant color.

Leave a comment on the Discussion Boards.

There's some weirdness going on with the publishing software. So ignore the post right under this one and read below as I try to fix it.

Henry Lamb has a great organization called ECO, he has published an article called Green Zombies on World Net Daily about school textbooks that you might find interesting.

Also, I have started a discussion board site if you want to comment on things you see here or elsewhere.

I really hate to sound paranoid and the idea behind the United Nations seems like a good thing, and preserving and protecting wildlife is a good thing (I do have a degree in Horticulture, you know) BUT I wonder if the UN and the people who work there and with them really understand how their decisions affect thepeople they are supposedly charged with helping. It seems to me that the plants and animals are being put first. Here is a great example of what I am talking about.
Look at this map and pay special attention to the dominant color.

I know that some of you will have a comment on this. Click on the No comments:

Since I just started this blog, I have a whole stack of stuff to get out. So please be patient if some of this seems like old news. You should read it again anyway. :)

Here's an example of why I don't use the textbook in my science class very often, although to be honest I haven't thoroughly checked for propaganda in the text supplied to me.

Green Zombies? This is an article from WorldNetDaily by Henry Lamb. Check out his website and subscribe to his newsletter if you haven't already at ECO

Here's a site with a lot of information on the real story with global warming. Is it happening? Yes! Is it a bad thing? No!

Visit The Greening Earth Society

Check out the reading list in the links. Then come back here and help support this poor underpaid teacher by purchasing one from Amazon.com!

To fight you must be educated. I am a teacher after all... To that end, here are some books you must read!
1. A Moment on the Earth by Gregg Easterbrook.
2. The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg.
--These two books are interesting because they are both written by self described liberal environmentalists. You probably have heard what happened to Mr. Lomborg. The same sort of thing happened to a lesser extent to Easterbrook. Both of these books throw some cold water on the doomsday prophecies of the Green movement.

Another reccommended read is Trashing the Planet by Dixie Lee Ray. There are many other good books, Way to many to list them all here. Hmmm. Maybe a reccommended reading list link?

Get them, read them, learn from them.

A new link! About me!!

Here's an interesting thing I just found from the Heritage Foundation. To avoid climate change there would need to be 40 different changes similar to the Kyoto Protocol. Read it here.

"Human activity is undoing creation" This quote comes directly from The Wildlands Project Mission statement. This is required
reading. It is also scary in what it implies about the way they feel about people....

I am still playing with templates because I haven't decided what I want it to look like, so please bear with me!

Should private property owners be afraid of the UN? Decide for yourself, read this article from World Net Daily.

A new look! Real stuff coming soon.

Welcome! This is my first post to my first blog. I hope you will find some interesting information here. We need to keep our side informed of all the craziness about nature, the environment, and the sometimes whacky environmentalists.