I cannot tell a lie: I DID chop down the Cherry tree!

  Maybe George Washington wasn't doing such a bad thing by admitting he had chopped-down the cherry tree.
One might think this to be a bad thing: killing a potential food source, destroying a habitat for birds, etc.
On page 88 of Cradle to Cradle, we learn about the Menominnie tribe of Wisconsin, wood harvesters for many generations. Somehow they increased their "stumpage" of timber on their 235,000 acre reservation from 1.3 billion standing board feet of timber in 1870 to over 1.7 billion today; all while harvesting 2.25 billion standing board feet. Math doesn't lie. Evidently chopping down trees is not necessarily such a bad thing, when stewarded responsibly.
   This stewardship comes with a price, however. While the Tribe remains a proud and resilient people living in Wisconsin on some of the most beautiful lands ever to grace this earth they, like so many Tribes in this Nation, have become slaves to entitlements and are especially dependent upon funding provided by the Federal government through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service. New generations are being raised by parents who have not had to earn an "honest" living. Mortality rates, obesity, poverty, unemployment, violent crime and single parent households are among the highest in the nation.
   Although the Tribe has over 8,700 members, less than half are able to reside on the Reservation due to lack of employment opportunities, available housing, and an aging infrastructure that is incapable of sustaining current demand, let alone take on additional residents or economic development opportunities.
   Sometimes, perhaps, a few trees need to be felled to make progress; to build new housing, to put people back to work, to offer a better future and more pride for themselves and those who follow. It all starts with honesty. We have a lot to learn from our elders, and should learn better how to build upon that which works. To not be dependent on an impersonal government that changes its' focus as readily as the winds shift. As George Washington said "I cannot tell a lie: I DID chop down the cherry tree". Look what it did for him. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all.

CLIMATE CHANGE: INCONVENIENT FACTS

"I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let's examine the facts." So quotes Dale Carnegie, from his 1936 book How to Win Friends and influence people.



     This is something I did NOT hear from the lips of Al Gore during his Dreamworks-produced Eco-thriller An Inconvenient Truth. What we did hear, as he narrated from his private jet and stretch limousine throughout the course of the film, was an attempt to equate human activity with global warming. While he correctly associates a correlation between increased CO2 levels with global warming, the connection isn't as simple as his famous dramatization of the' hockey-stick' graph showing population growth and temperature parallels. What he doesn't explain are things like: why did the earths' temperature DECREASE between 1940-1975, when the earth underwent a huge population and industrial growth spurt? What about accounting for volcanoes, which annually produce more CO2 than all human activity combined? No mention of solar activity? Ocean currents? H2O levels as a "greenhouse" gas? How come throughout history earth  has undergone long periods of global warming and ice ages, without the benefit (or detraction) of mankind and all the associated by-products? I'm old enough to recall the 1970's, when the prevailing scientific consensus was alarmed that we might be entering into, or accelerating and contributing to the onset of the next Ice-Age. Oh, and about those suffering Polar bears whose native habitat is being destroyed by mankind? Well, in the 1950s the polar bear population up north was estimated at 5,000. Today it’s 20- to 25,000, a number that has either held steady over the last 20 years or has risen slightly. In Canada, the manager of wildlife resources for the Nunavut territory of Canada has found that the population there has increased by 25 percent.  If someone is really interested in the topic of climate change, I would highly recommend viewing the following link:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov0WwtPcALE

By the way, as far as the famous (or infamous) 'hockey stick' graph Mr. Gore dramatically showed with the assist of an electrical scissor-lift? The actual data measured, compiled since the movie was made, as compared to his projections are, well, a bit inconvenient.


While this isn't the end-all of the discussion, I don't believe this contradictory information regarding man-made global warming to be as obviously politically motivated or fear-based in it's analysis as Inconvenient Truth. I think a lot of compelling information is presented by a lot of people smarter than I am on the subject, from NASA folks, chief meteorologists, and even the co-founder of Greenpeace. I don't think anyone who was involved in the documentary has made anywhere near $100 million from its' advocacy, or stands to make a lot more perpetuating a singular, narrow viewpoint. I don't think that anyone involved in its' production just bought their fourth mansion, a $9 million dollar 1-1/2 acre ocean-front beauty with 9 bathrooms and fountains in the San Francisco Bay (in the direct floodplain of the proposed ocean expansion from the impending polar meltdown resulting from global warming).

But then again, I may me wrong. I frequently am. Let's examine the facts.