Manatees Too

Remember the spotted owl? Its "threatened extinction" was the reason that the environmentalist used to reduce drastically the cutting of timber in the northwest United States. How about the snail darter? Again a creature that was the poster child for shutting off water to the farmers of the Central Valley of California. And the peregrine falcon? Rachael Carson used this bird as a way of outlawing DDT (and in the process killing millions of humans with malaria, etc.) And the salmon ... goodbye to any new hydroelectric dams ... and even a sizable parcel of older ones.

Enter stage left the manatee ... which now it is believed relies on the warm water exiting from coal-fired power plants in Florida to ease the rigors of cold weather there ... see: Miami Herald Article. But wait! This can't be! If the tree-huggers were to be consistent, they would fight our fearless leader's war on such "environmental hazards" as the use of coal to produce electricity.

But are they?   [... crickets ....]   One can only assume that these other animals were really incidental to the real hidden agendas of those who knew that they knew what was best for the rest of us.

Common Sense

Where has it all our common sense gone? Dozens of movie starlets put their nude photos up in the Internet cloud and then are incensed when a hacker finds them and Tweets them to the world ... see: Variety Story. (Although I suspect some of them secretly deem this breach a career enhancer.) And why would the state of California let many of  its rivers and streams run unchecked out to sea when it is suffering a severe drought ... see: San Jose Mercury News Story. Snail darters be damned! And why would millions of federal taxpayer dollars be squandered on finding out why lesbians tend toward obesity while gay men don't ... see: Washington Times Story? What's the benefit of this silly spending?

Last night at a party I got into an extended discussion with a very nice lady about global warming. I explained how carbon dioxide makes up an infinitesimal percentage of our atmosphere yet is the fundamental building block of all life. I told her how, long before man started using fossils fuels, that an ice sheet was a mile thick where we were sitting ... and yet the Earth warmed up without Al Gore's help. I explained that 600 million years ago carbon dioxide levels were ten times what they are today, yet the Earth survived. And then I said that the EPA declaring CO2 a pollutant was insane and that these new proposed regulations were quite likely to destroy our economy without affecting the world's climate. Her response was, "Shouldn't we do it anyway ... just to be safe?" AARG!  Where is the common sense?

And notice here, not once have I even mentioned Obama's sense of the uncommon ...