Global Warming Blame-ologists Play with Fire

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Good news: The Waldo Canyon fire, which forced 32,000 residents (including our family) to flee, claimed two lives and destroyed 347 homes, is now 100 percent contained. Bad news: Radical environmentalists won't stop blowing hot air about this year's infernal season across the West.

Al Gore slithered out of the political morgue to bemoan nationwide heat records and pimp his new "Climate Reality Project," which blames global warming for the wildfire outbreak. NBC meteorologist Doug Kammerer asserted: "If we did not have global warming, we wouldn't see this." Agriculture Department Undersecretary Harris Sherman, who oversees the Forest Service, claimed to the Washington Post: "The climate is changing, and these fires are a very strong indicator of that."

And the Associated Press (or rather, the Activist Press) lit the fear-mongering torch with an eco-propaganda piece titled "U.S. summer is what 'global warming will look like.'"

The problem is that the actual conclusions of scientists included in AP's screed don't back up the apocalyptic headline. As the reporter acknowledges under that panicky banner:

"Scientifically linking individual weather events to climate change takes intensive study, complicated mathematics, computer models and lots of time. Sometimes it isn't caused by global warming. Weather is always variable; freak things happen."

So, this U.S. summer may or may not really look like "what global warming looks like." Kinda. Sorta. Possibly. Possibly not.

Furthermore, the AP reporter concedes, the "global" nature of the warming and its supposed catastrophic events have "been local. Europe, Asia and Africa aren't having similar disasters now, although they've had their own extreme events in recent years."

A more hedging headline would have been journalistically responsible, but Chicken Little-ism better serves the global warming blame-ologists' agenda.

More inconvenient truths: As The Washington Times noted this week, the National Climatic Data Center shows that "Colorado has actually seen its average temperature drop slightly from 1998 to 2011, when data is collected only from rural stations and not those that have been urbanized since 1900."

Radical green efforts to block logging and timber sales in national forests since the 1990s are the real culprits. Wildlife mitigation experts point to incompetent forest management and militant opposition to thinning the timber fuel supply.

Another symptom of green obstructionism: widespread bark beetle infestations. The U.S. Forest Service itself reported last year:

"During the last part of the 20th century, widespread treatments in lodgepole pine stands that would have created age class diversity, enhanced the vigor of remaining trees, and improved stand resiliency to drought or insect attack -- such as timber harvest and thinning -- lacked public acceptance. Proposals for such practices were routinely appealed and litigated, constraining the ability of the Forest Service to manage what had become large expanses of even-aged stands susceptible to a bark beetle outbreak."

Capitulation to lawsuit-happy green thugs, in others, undermined "public acceptance" of common sense, biodiversity-preserving and lifesaving timber harvest and thinning practices.

Local, state and federal officials offered effusive praise for my fellow Colorado Springs residents who engaged in preventive mitigation efforts in their neighborhoods. The government flacks said it made a life-and-death difference. Yet, litigious environmental groups have sabotaged such mitigation efforts at the national level -- in effect, creating an explosive tinderbox out of the West.

Stoking global warming alarms may make for titillating headlines and posh Al Gore confabs. But it's a human blame avoidance strategy rooted in ideological extremism and flaming idiocy.

Worst U.S. Forest Fires

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0778688.html

1871

Oct. 8–14, Peshtigo, Wis: over 1,500 lives lost and 3.8 million acres burned in nation's worst forest fire.

1889

June 6, Seattle, Wash.: fire destroyed 64 acres of the city and killed 2 people. Damage was estimated at $15 million.

1894

Sept. 1, Minn.: forest fires ravaged over 160,000 acres and destroyed 6 towns; 600 killed, including 413 in town of Hinckley.

1902

Sept., Wash. and Ore.: Yacoult fire destroyed 1 million acres and left 38 dead.

1910

Aug. 10, Idaho and Mont.: fires burned 3 million acres of woods and killed 85 people.

1918

Oct. 13–15, Minn. and Wis.: forest fire struck towns in both states; 1,000 died, including 400 in town of Cloquet, Minn. About $1 million in losses.

There are others thru the present time of course, but up to that date (1918) one would be hard pressed to try and link those forest fires with the advent of "Fossil Fuels," or blame them on Mankind.

The same can be said about other major storms and natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, snow storms, floods, etc. in our history, but none of the Environmentalist Wackos will even consider that there is a reason we refer to them as "NATURAL" (i.e. caused by "Nature") disasters, for that would be to admit that their entire "Gore-Bull Warming" stchick is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on Mankind.

The Feds are responsible for the fires more than anything else:

1. Removal of animals from their long-standing grazing permits on Federal land, where the cattle & goats eat the lower ground fuels & help prevent lightning started fires from gaining a foothold into the shrubs & trees. These grazing permits are long standing & are paid for by the cattlemen. ALL fencing, enhancement of water sources,etc are also done & paid for by the cattlemen. Wildlife benefit from such water sources, also. Therefore, hunters benefit & the costs to the hunters of tags to allow them to hunt benefit the area, along with the products purchased from Cabela’s, Scheel’s, Dick’s, etc.

2. Total FAILURE of the Obama administration to authorize the purchase & use of numerous planes which are outfitted for fire fighting. 7 (only) such planes were finally authorized by Obama just about 10 days ago——long after New Mexico and Colorado & other places have suffered from such fires being totally out of control. One C-130 crashed in S Dakota last week. So- Obama immediately grounds the entire fire fighting fleet ‘until we know why is crashed’. Airplanes crash every day!!!!! NO ONE grounds the entire commercial airline industry ‘until we know why it crashed’!!!!!!

3. Clinton & Babbitt-—who created ‘roadless’ policies within the boundaries of Federally controlled land, particularly in the states west of the Mississippi. Fire equipment, trucks, men, etc, cannot get into the fire areas to fight a fire when it is small. The ‘roads’ have been padlocked off & in many cases, huge holes were backhoed into the roads, making passage of equipment impossible. When the only way to get to a small fire is to WALK in or to PARACHUTE in, like the “HOTSHOTS” do, then the fire gets a real head start.

4. Refusal of the Feds to control the bark beetles & to allow removal of downed trees from areas already burned. Such timber has a somewhat useful value for about 2 years, but the Feds & the Greenies have joined together to prevent any such logging of ‘downed trees’. Therefore, such downed trees become targets for more bark beetles & the dry, damaged timber becomes fuel for a worse fire. Such downed trees are plainly visible on the south side of Interstate 80, just west of Reno, from a fire about 7 years ago.

5. The Feds & all their bureaus & departments are never on the same page. Their chronic infighting is harming all of the forests of the USA. One example???
The Washoe County Sheriff’s office (Reno, Nevada) has a multi-use helicopter called ‘Raven’. It can be used for pursuit & many other things, including dropping about 500 gallons of water at a time onto a fire. A fire this week in the south part of Reno was raging. The Raven helicopter could NOT be used to fight this fire because part of the fire was on or advancing onto NATIONAL PARK SERVICE holdings. The Raven has been authorized by the Feds to work where there is Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, but the NPS still hasn’t granted authorization to Raven. The BLM authorization took over 2 years to obtain!!!!!! The permit process is still hovering at NPS!!!! Meanwhile, homes are threatened & fires are damaging watershed.

There is no answer that is acceptable from the Feds on this issue. NONE. They are bent on destroying more and more of the USA.

Guess what, politicians????

A burned out home isn’t creating any property tax base for you to spend foolishly!!!!

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