Posted on 10/10/2005 11:58:21 PM PDT by Yosemitest
October 10, 2005
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RUSH: I have a couple of environmental stories here that I want to share with you. First in the New York Times. The headline: "As Polar Ice Turns to Water, Dreams of Treasure Abound." The story is written from Churchill, Manitoba, which for those of you in Rio Linda, is Canada. A manatee is the sea cow. " It seems harsh to say that bad news for polar bears is good for Pat Broe. Mr. Broe, a Denver entrepreneur, is no more to blame than anyone else for a meltdown at the top of the world that threatens Arctic mammals and ancient traditions and lends credibility to dark visions of global warming. Still, the newest study of the Arctic ice cap - finding that it faded this summer to its smallest size ever recorded - is beginning to make Mr. Broe look like a visionary for buying this derelict Hudson Bay port from the Canadian government in 1997. Especially at the price he paid: about $7. By Mr. Broe's calculations, Churchill could bring in as much as $100 million a year as a port on Arctic shipping lanes shorter by thousands of miles than routes to the south, and traffic would only increase as the retreat of ice in the region clears the way for a longer shipping season."
Basically what this story is about here is that as the polar ice cap is melting, supposedly, we are learning that there is quite a lot of value underneath it, like oil and lots of fishies. Lots of fishies to be caught and eaten, lots of food swimming around up there underneath the arctic shelf, and the New York Times story is all concerned about the commerce potential of this shrinking ice cap. "Last year, scientists found tantalizing hints of oil--" Oil! "--in seabed samples just 200 miles from the North Pole." Folks, do you understand the ramifications of this? Oil 200 miles from the North Pole? And get this: "According to the story, one quarter," 25% for those of you in Rio Linda, "of the world's undiscovered oil and gas resources lie in the arctic, according to the United States Geological Survey." Now, how is oil made? I don't know what you were taught. When I was in school, and I've told you this, I was taught that oil was made from the decaying remains of our early ancestors, the dinosaurs, those big things trundling around the planet and so forth. That's why everybody thought there would be a shortage of oil that wouldn't last very long, because there weren't that many dinosaurs, not enough to decay to produce this kind of oil. That's why it was called "fossil fuels." I grew up thinking it was caused by dinosaurs. Well, not true.
"Most geologists view crude oil, like coal and natural gas, as the product of compression and heating of ancient vegetation over geological time scales." That means quite a few years. "According to this theory, it is formed from the decayed remains of prehistoric marine animals and terrestrial plants. Over many centuries this organic matter, mixed with mud, is buried under thick sedimentary layers of material. The resulting high levels of heat and pressure cause the remains to metamorphose, first into a waxy material known as kerogen, and then into liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons in a process known as catagenesis. These then migrate through adjacent rock layers until they become trapped underground in porous rocks called reservoirs, forming an oil field, from which the liquid can be extracted by drilling and pumping." You can also find this at Wikipedia. Just get on Wikipedia, put in "petroleum," and this is what you'll get. Anyway, if there was warming, it is a result of the only furnace capable of generating enough heat to affect the temperature here on earth, and what is that? And, by the way, we're talking centuries ago, folks, oil at the North Pole. There is only one element of heat, one source of heat strong enough to cause something like this, and it's Mr. Sun. But here's the real question. If there is oil at the North Pole, and you have to admit, folks, even with the so-called melting of the ice cap, it's still pretty cold up there.
I mean, you still need a jacket to go up there to visit Santa Claus. If there is oil where it is cold now, it had to be pretty damn hot there in the past, didn't it? Wouldn't you think? I mean, if we've got oil reserves up there, 25%, that had to be a pretty, pretty hot smoking place at some point in our earth's past, don't you believe? And it had to be warm there or hot there for a very, very long period of time -- and, by the way, we're talking about a period of time when there were relatively few SUVs and evil corporations pock-marking our planet, unless, of course, Tom Cruise's Scientology aliens were hard at work polluting the planet as they went about their business of populating the earth. I mean, there could be any number of explanations for this. That's the process by which oil is made and it takes a lot of heat over a long period of time, and it's pretty frigid up there. So it must have been pretty hot at some point, and the point there is, if it was really hot up there when we didn't have all that many SUVs up there then and we didn't have that many evil corporations, what was it that caused the heat? It has to be the sun. It can't have been humanity. So just wanted to pass that on.
Environmental story number two. It's from the Wall Street Journal. You talk about gouging? You talk about evil? You talk about selfishness? You talk about just absolute carelessness and lack of sensitivity for anybody else? "Hurricanes Katrina and Rita knocked down millions of trees." This story hasn't been told, folks. Oh, yeah, we've seen the houses that were felled and we've seen the floods and we've seen the people, but we haven't seen the story of the trees. We haven't seen it. There's a reason. There's a reason, my friends, that we haven't seen the devastation of these millions of trees. You know why? Because loggers -- evil timber company employees -- are "scrambling against the odds to get those trees to market before they rot or further contribute to the region's wildfire danger. From Texas to Alabama, these two hurricanes alone toppled forests as far as 50 miles inland. As much as 21 million board feet of timber, trees, which by state and federal figures is enough to build one million homes," destroyed, felled, kaput. "State officials estimate the market value of the downed timber at about $900 million in Louisiana," and get this, "2.4 billion in Mississippi. The amount of timber debris in the forest is as much as 50 tons an acre, which is more than ten times the norm," and guess who's going in there and taking it out? The evil lumber companies!
These are people that would have never been allowed to cut down these trees. You talk gouging and profiteering! Are they in there helping people? Hell no. No, they're in there taking these forests. You know, what are they going to do? Why, they're going to turn these trees into something they can sell. Baseball bats, pianos, houses or whatever. They're going to admittedly turn them into beautiful things. (interruption) Well, it's not pristine wasteland anymore, Mr. Snerdley. It's wasteland. That is a good point. Since this is what the environmentalists want, why rebuild this place at all? This is what they tell us the earth should be. Just go pitch a tent and live there. But my point is this: These evil loggers would not have been able to get within 50 miles of these forests were it not for the hurricanes, and yet, here come the hurricanes, and they go in there disguised as rescue workers. They go in there trying to make people think they're there to help, and what are they doing? Stealing lumber to make homes, to make baseball bats, pianos, chairs, whatever else that they make out of it. It's unconscionable, this lack of concern and compassion.
Read the Articles...
(Houston Chronicle: Destruction of thousands of acres of trees)
My father tells me that as of today pine logs were selling for $16.00 to $14.00 a ton and they are watching the logs for "blueing" to cull them to pulp wood at a much cheaper price.
If you're not careful, a load of logs will bring less than the cost of the fuel to harvest and deliver it cost.
$16 to $14 a ton makes it a good buy for firewood, at least if it was in the Pacific Northwest.
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