One of the first things you must consider comes from the pioneer days. When settlers first came west, they discovered that the various tribes were maintaining the land...notpreserving it, but maintaining it. They would stay in one place for a while, hunting and farming that area, then move to another. In doing so, they insured that the various game animals would not be wiped out, nor would they grow so numerous that they would wreck the area by over-eating, leaving nothing for the other animals, and thus maintaining the food chain. Keeping the animals at a reasonable number, they also prevented various diseases that can occur in population explosions. The Indian's nomadic practices also avoided an over-farming of the soil, ensuring that the next time they were in the vicinity, there would be fertile land to use.

But perhaps the most interesting practice was using controlled burns. You see, if left unchecked, deadwood, old leaves, and undergrowth will accumulate in any wooded area. Anyone who has ever tried to build a fire without a starter log or any accelerant can tell you that if you try lighting a bare log, you're gonna have one cold, frustrating night. You use kindling, which is typically something small, dry, and combustible...like deadwood, old leaves, and dried undergrowth.

By performing a controlled burn, the Indians got rid of all this tinder. So if lightning struck a live tree, there would be less fuel for the fire, reducing the chance of a massive, uncontrollable forest fire that would wipe out ALL the game in the area, and probably a few Indians as well. How well did it work? Ask any of those hippies, if you feel like enduring hours and hours of babble about how beautiful and natural the country was when the White Man first arrived. That didn't happen by chance; that was Indians torching the forest from time to time.

So when Teddy Roosevelt decided to "preserve" Yellowstone National Park in a moment of time, he outlawed the needed maintenance. Within a very short time, the deadwood and undergrowth were piled high against every tree trunk, and animals (now illegal to be hunted) grew so numerous they were destroying the entire ecology. Wolves, the perennial villain (often for good reason), were killing deer and other cute animals. Those horrid wolves! They must die! So the wolves were hunted out of Yellowstone. Now all the sweet fuzzy little critters were safe from the nasty evil predators!

But not from themselves.

The cute and fuzzies no longer had a predator to keep their numbers in check. As a result, the bunnies bred like bunnies. As did all the other previous menu items. They started breeding like crazy, and devouring every leaf in sight...but just the live ones. The deadwood and such was left untouched, especially since some of the C&Fs liked to eat the bugs that eat the deadwood. More and more deadwood was piling up, the C&F crowd were chowing down like Brando at the Golden Corral, soon the food supply wasn't sufficient to maintain the massive number of eaters. Famine set in, and it brought its buzzkill cousin, Disease. Thanks to this "preservation", Yellowstone was becoming a pristinely preserved abattoir.

Let's not forget the forest fires! In fact, back in 1988 (yes, that's how long the stupidity had gone on, and continues to a large extent TODAY) Yellowstone caught fire. And it burned like the fires of Hell itself. It burned for MONTHS and more than half a million acres were gutted. Witnesses relate that the smoke could be seen from miles away. Even in New York, 1500 miles away, the effects could be seen in the atmosphere.

Did the tree-huggers learn their lesson? Not in California, apparently. Most of the yearly wildfires there are due to the same dangers the Indians learned to prevent; get rid of the kindling, and the fire has less fuel. It is illegal to remove the undergrowth in many areas, in the name of preserving.

Which brings us back to Global Warming and a look at what Gore and his Cabal of Doom would do to prevent the planet from exploding or whatever.

The AGW deception focuses mostly on cutting CO2, because all that nasty CO2 is making the planet heat up! Right. Nevermind the fact that CO2 occurs in NATURE. Nevermind that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is minute; Michael Crichton wrote in State of Fear that if you compare the atmosphere to the length of a football field, CO2 makes up the space of a DIME'S THICKNESS. And that's ALL the CO2, not just what can be attributed to Man; more than 90% of the CO2 in the atmosphere comes from Nature. They also neglect to mention (for those who weren't paying attention in Biology class) that plants FEED ON CO2! It's GOOD for the plants, which is good for us...otherwise, the plants wouldn't be able to release that OXYGEN that we've all taken a shining to. And how much would 100% compliance with the Green Nazi's do in regards of reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere? Zilch. According to a paper written for PNAS, even if we stopped all CO2 emissions completely, WORLD WIDE, it would take a thousand years to show any real effect. (Anyone else recall the argument about how drilling for more oil is a waste of time because it would take TEN years to have any effect?) Oh, and that includes stopping all living creatures from exhaling.

Look at the Kyoto Protocols sometime. Billions and billions each year, and yet it will have virtually NO EFFECT on anything but the economy...and this is the opinion of Bjorn Lomborg, who DOES believe in AGW. In fact, in an October 2007 article he wrote for the Washington Post, he found that adherence to the Kyoto plan would make it nearly impossible to prepare and defend against the effects of ANY climate change, especially for poorer nations.

Do not make the mistake of believing these people's hearts are in the right place. Kyoto and the Green Movement are PURPOSEFULLY ineffective; I believe they know full well that screwing around with the environment is like playing Russian Roulette with five chambers loaded. This is why the AGW crowd has no problem with Gore using more electricity in his house for a month than a hundred homes use in a year. This is why these guys have no problem with jetting around the world and making a carbon footprint that dwarfs that of a brachiosaurus. They KNOW there is no reason to reduce emissions any more than they already are. If they were truly concerned about such things, they'd all be living like Ed Begley Jr, bopping around at 10 mph in a solar-powered car.

Not that I agree with Ed; I think he's an idiot. But at least he's not a hypocrite; he's worried about his impact on the environment, and he's actually DOING something about it. I can respect that, even if I don't agree with it. But the Gore Whores are just plain full of crap. The suits know damn well that there is no danger, at least not one we can really do anything about, and they know their plan will do absolutely nothing for the environment. And truth be told, by draining the economy with Cap and Tax and Green Initiatives and what-all, they are removing the MEANS by which we can help the environment. Green costs green, folks; check the price difference between ONE earthenware coffee mug and a pack of styrofoam cups. According to TargetOnline, a set of four mugs is $14.99. I can go to OfficeMax and get ONE THOUSAND Styrofoam 8 oz. cups for under $40. The breakdown is one cup for $3.74, or one cup for twenty-five CENTS, or almost fifteen cups for the price of one.