So Mark Udall Has a History of Questionable Campaign Activities...

We recently posted about the connection between Mark Udall's wife Maggie Fox and the third-party League of Conservation Voters, a group spending hundreds of thousands on attack ads against Bob Schaffer. Rocky Mountain Right follows up, pointing out that such potential coordination wouldn't be the first time for Udall:

One has to wonder the extent of shady impropriety that is occuring between Udall and these left-wing environmentalist groups this year given his past history. In 1998, The Sierra Club was caught "loaning" staff members to Mark Udall's congressional campaign even as Mark Udall's wife was regional representative for the organization.

Read the whole post for details.

Of course, it probably doesn't hurt to mention one more time that not only does Mark Udall have a history of "shady dealings," but so does the League of Conservation Voters - fined $180,000 for illegal activities in 2006.

Enviro-Radical Campaign to End Up Exposing Mark Udall's Harmful Policies?

The Rocky Mountain News has one of the most un-amazing "dog bites man" headlines of the year: "Five national environmental groups to target Schaffer."

No one is surprised that the out-of-state enviro-radicals like Sierra Club are throwing their political heft behind their champion Mark Udall. But what fewer people may know is that Mark Udall and the Sierra Club are working behind the scenes in Congress to kill a moderate bipartisan compromise plan that would allow clean drilling on the Roan Plateau. Killing the plan means thwarting jobs, economic growth, and higher education funding for Colorado.

In addition, some of the short-sighted policies Udall has championed for the enviro-radical lobby have exacerbated the damage to Colorado forests from fires and pine beetles.

A watcher observes:

The rules are a bit different here in Colorado. While these groups can come in and try to destroy Bob Schaffer's chances, they are quite vulnerable to being hung on their own scaffold. If industries can be punished and regulated for emitting greenhouse gases as Bill Ritter seems intent to do, then environmentalist organizations and their contributors can be held responsible and liable for the carbon dioxide put out by fires and rotting timber. It is the same gas.

A watcher points readers to a new Reuters article that highlights the massive carbon dioxide emissions from pine beetles and forest fires. Udall and the Sierra Club can't have it both ways.

Colorado needs a more moderate, balanced, reasonable approach than Mark Udall and the enviro-radical lobby have to offer.

To Colorado's Detriment, Mark Udall Trying to Take Both Sides on Roan Plateau

Last year, Mark Udall followed his Sierra Club buddies in outright opposition to drilling on the Roan Plateau. Then Gov. Bill Ritter came up with a compromise plan that would slowly phase in drilling leases while still leaving some of the areas of the Plateau under government protection.

Some were surprised to see Bob Schaffer join Udall in support of Ritter's Roan proposal:

Schaffer's campaign points out that Udall first supported a moratorium on drilling on the Roan before getting on board Ritter's compromise plan, which allows some drilling on the environmentally sensitive plateau but calls for phased leasing over time and expands the size of protected areas.

"Boulder liberal Udall opposed any kind of activity on the Roan Plateau and reluctantly supported the Ritter proposal when Gov. Ritter announced it," said Dick Wadhams, Schaffer's campaign manager.

That may not be exactly fair, given the fact that the year-long moratorium wasn't a plan in itself but only a call to hold off on drilling until a better plan was developed. And Ritter's idea, Udall's aides say, counts as that better plan. [emphasis added]

Now, as the Rocky Mountain News points out, Mark Udall has flip-flopped back, working to stall out the clock to prevent even Ritter's modest "better plan" from going into effect:

Like it or not, the clock may run out before energy companies gain access to the massive natural gas supplies beneath federal lands on the Roan Plateau.

Unfortunately, the proposal introduced Thursday by Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar and Reps. John Salazar and Mark Udall would place new development on the Roan on hold. It would jeopardize a financial bonanza for the state that could reach $1 billion.

At this point, delaying new development may be the same as denying it. Whether the next president is Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Barack Obama, domestic fossil-fuel production is likely to have a lower priority than it has under President Bush. And in the case of Clinton and Obama, probably much lower.

Regulators could impose procedural delays that make drilling financially unattractive to energy companies. Investors who have no guarantee where, whether or how soon they can drill on the Roan are likely to sink their capital in locations that are more welcoming to energy production.

In theory, the bill would enact the outline for the Roan offered by Gov. Bill Ritter in December, for which we had kind words. In fact, though, it would impose many more restrictions. It could place much of the estimated 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas beneath federally controlled areas of the Roan out of reach.

Not only could that gas heat every home in Colorado for 20 years; leases and royalties from the wells could also secure essential funding for impacted communities and higher education. That money won't materialize if drilling isn't economically viable. [emphases added]

To echo what one of my colleagues here wrote nearly six months ago:

...[I]s Mark Udall going to continue to represent out-of-state environmental interests, or at what point is he going to try to represent Colorado's interests?

Looking back, Mark Udall's strategy must be to give the impression of willingness to make a reasonable compromise that would benefit Colorado's interests, while working feverishly behind the scenes to tack on unreasonable restrictions that cater to out-of-state environmental interests.

If Mark Udall gets his way, Colorado will see potential new jobs and economic growth, more affordable energy, and even funding for public colleges and universities all will be headed down the drain. Will Udall later act as if there is nothing he could have done to stop it, when he and fellow Democrats Ken Salazar and John Salazar were the ones busy working to pull out the plug?

You can almost picture Mark Udall's aides last month telling reporters that Ritter's compromise was a "better plan," with their fingers crossed behind their backs. Udall's super-secret "even better plan" is to follow lock-step with the Sierra Club agenda while ignoring Colorado's balanced needs.

Absurdicus makes a plea

Our friend Absurdicus is back with a comment on the Big Blue Lie Machine Post. It is too long to repeat here and keep to our short post format, so we will pick and choose:

Apparently my entire argument is lost because of my mistake of elevation. God forbid I would assume elevation above the earth was not normalized to elevation above ground level.

Go use Google Earth now. You will find it to be addictive. Your real mistake was to respond to what we wrote without even looking at what we were writing about. Had you done that you would have had to assume nothing.

Absurdicus is now the first individual that we know of to admit that the Roan Plateau is no Garden of Eden, no pristine untouched land worthy of saving because of its uniqueness:

Despite my basic math mistake, the argument that at 1000 feet a piece of land should be drilled on just because it doesn't look "pretty" is still my argument. Please address my point, that just because it looks ugly at any distance it should be drilled and drunk up like a milkshake.

Frankly, we didn't know that was your argument.

No one, not Bill Ritter, not John Salazar, not Ken Salazar, not the Sierra Club, not Trout Unlimited, not the Wilderness Society, not the Denver Post, not the Rocky Mountain News, and especially not Mark Udall nor any other individual or organization involved with pushing the environmental agenda has had the intellectual honesty to make that argument.

Instead, they use words and photographs intended to fool the public into believing that the land is something it is not. We never would have thought to look at the land using Google Earth but for the obviously deceptive video ad that we wrote about in Looking More Closely at The Udall Commercial - Part 3. We've driven through that part of Colorado many times and it is a lot of things, but it is not wet.

Absurdicus, we don't know how to respond to your argument. It is one that needs to be had in an honest way by the politicians who represent us, unencumbered by the false propaganda that is pumped out daily.

Instead, we have the politicians like Mark Udall and Bill Ritter as well as the newspaper editorial boards who should be demanding and engaging in an honest discussion unwilling to do so out of fear that they would lose in that environment. There can't be another reason.

The politicians spend their time pushing the false propaganda and taking big campaign donations from the organizations which generate it. The organizations collect big donations for supposedly "protecting the environment" when they are often doing no such thing.

There will never be a response to your argument from us or anyone else because none on your side, probably including you, will allow it to be held under conditions we could respect.

An Ignorant Denver Post Editorial

The Denver Post published an amazingly ignorant editorial today that it called "With Friends Like These, The West Doesn't Need Enemies."

The bark beetle tree kill in Colorado has been historic in magnitude. With all this tinder lying around on federal land, you might think the government would be redoubling efforts to haul out dead trees, make the forests healthy and support fire management activities.

Unfortunately, that's not the reality reflected in President Bush's budget request for 2009.

His budget actually cuts funding by 11.2 percent for the region of the Forest Service that includes Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.

To hear the Denver Post tell it, this is all President Bush's fault. It conveniently leaves out the fact that President Bush or his successor could direct the entire Federal budget toward getting rid of the dead trees and not a single tree would be removed.

Why? The Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and their congressional toadies like Mark Udall, Ken Salazar, and John Salazar have laws in place which prevent the building of forest roads necessary to do the work.

If the Denver Post did a Lexus-Nexus search, it would discover that the victims who lost their homes in last summer's Lake Tahoe fire were blaming the Sierra Club for going to court to stop the construction of forest roads. The roads were needed for the thinning that would have saved their homes and at least one life. The problem wasn't a lack of Federal funding. It was a lack of common sense by the Mark Udall's of the congress.

Mark Udall not only doesn't want new roads to be built, he wants existing roads closed. In 2007 he proposed an amendment to do just that.

Yes, the west has friends that it can do without. Ken Salazar, Mark Udall, and John Salazar along with their eco terrorist sponsors in the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society are much higher on that list than President Bush or his successor, Republican or Democrat ever can be.

Wake up, Denver Post, and put some pressure on these turkeys. Your editorial was a cheap shot that gives the real culprits a free pass. It was pure ignorance.

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Not Clear Cutting Forests

No, this isn't a proposal for slap-dash clear cutting of forests.

One of the things that is so frustrating about watching Mark Udall and his environmentalist extremist allies in the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society is their refusal to do any kind of cost-benefit analysis on the things they propose.

We are reminded of this by a Walter E. Williams essay on Costs vs. Benefits that never mentions the word "environment" or "global warming." Instead, it tries to teach the basic concepts of cost benefit analysis:

If we look to benefits only, we'll do darn near anything because there's always a benefit. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that there were 43,443 highway fatalities in 2005. If we had a maximum speed law of 15 mph, the death toll wouldn't be nearly as high, probably not even as high as 500. You say, "Williams, that's a crazy idea!" You're right, but let's not call it crazy; it's more accurate to say: saving some 43,000 lives aren't worth the cost and inconvenience of a 15 mph speed limit.

Now, take Mark Udall's support of roadless wilderness.

What is the benefit? It is primarily aesthetic. If there are no roads, there can be no lumbering. If there is no lumbering, there can not be ugly areas of clear cutting. Yes, clear cutting is ugly but it can lead to healthier forests that are less likely to burn. Which is uglier, a 60,000 acre burned forest or a few 300 acre clear cuts? Which is uglier, a 600,000 acre fire that burned so hot that it fused the soil or a few roads that allow thinning and even clear cutting over a few thousand acres?

What is the cost of these aesthetic benefits? Higher lumber prices, lost jobs, and destroyed local economies that then have to be subsidized by either the Federal or state government. Who pays those costs? It is almost never the people who benefit. Higher lumber prices are a well disguised regressive tax on the poor whose housing costs are forced up to acommodate the more wealthy population's desire for aesthetics. Yes, the wealthy pay more taxes, but their costs never match the hardship their policies impose on others.

A secret cost, again never paid by those who benefit, or admitted by politicians like Mark Udall is the cost in lives expended fighting forest fires that could have been contained by well planned clear cut fire breaks.

Here in Colorado, the costs are enormous. We have 1.5 million acres of lodge pole pine forests that are infected with the pine bark beetle, with projections that by 2012 every mature lodge pole pine in the state will be dead. This is the direct cost of Mark Udall's no roads-no thinning policy, but he is not paying the cost. Instead, he is reaping huge donations from the west coast "environmentalists" who won't be coming to Colorado to look at their handiwork.

Where Is Mark Udall's Common Sense and Compassion?

It used to be the environmental organizations and their toadies like Mark Udall who accused the timber industry of slash and burn tactics against our forests.

Now, they are being accused of slash and burn tactics against the economies of areas which used to rely on the timber industry and are now being asked to live off tourism revenues in burned out areas that no one wants to visit.

This is one of a series of articles and essays we are bringing forward to show just how dangerous, ruthless, and callous the environmental extremists like the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and their congressional allies like Mark Udall and John Salazar have become. What is happening in Oregon will happen here in Colorado.

Environmental groups and their allies [ like Mark Udall ] argue that tourism can take the place of the millions of lost timber dollars and revenues from these O&C public lands. But tourism jobs and revenues often simply cannot replace the family-wage jobs and tax revenues that have historically come from timber production on these lands...

Environmental groups have successfully fought efforts to salvage and replant burned areas in Oregon, even when it would benefit forest health. Tourists are not interested in seeing dead, dying and bug infested forests.

The author of this article can only be described as bitter toward the "environmentalist extremists." Before Mark Udall tries to get himself elected to the US Senate, he needs to explain how it is good public policy to allow well paid lawyers and environmental groups to destroy people's livlihoods when they don't pay taxes in the state they are laying waste to.

Wealthy, tax-exempt groups such as the Wilderness Society also work to restrict public access to public lands like the O&C Lands. They work to prohibit the construction of roads into public areas for recreational or economic use. To the Wilderness Society and its executives, and other wealthy groups such as the Sierra Club, the public should be excluded from public lands and those areas shouldn’t be a tax base for local Oregon counties. Ironically, recreationists like hikers and fishermen often access public areas on old logging roads, built by those in the wood products industry.

Mark Udall is the Worst Kind of Rubber Stamp

We saw a Google Digg Alert claiming that Mark Udall is not a rubber stamp. That sounds really good because voters shouldn't want their politicians to be rubber stamps. Bob Schaffer certainly wasn't a rubber stamp when he was in congress.

The problem is that Mark Udall is a rubber stamp for the environmentalist extremist movement.

We have a growing crisis in Colorado with our mega acres of dead trees. Common sense says that we should be clear cutting fire breaks to keep the whole state from going up at once.

The Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club say that we shouldn't. Burn, Colorado Burn, is their mantra. Mark Udall is a rubber stamp for this insane position. Mark these words: Mark Udall's position will cost fire fighters lives.

Does he care? Not that we can tell.

Money Race Even, Rules aren't.

The Boulder Daily Camera is reporting that, discounting the almost $1.2 million that Mark Udall transferred into his senate race from his congressional race coffers, both men have about the same amount of money on hand.

Mark Udall took advantage of a designed campaign finance law quirk that allows a sitting congressman to raise funds for a senate race before his official announcement while his opponent cannot. Thus, Udall had an almost 15 month head start in fund raising. Not coincidentially, Udall voted himself this advantage.

We have to chuckle at another Mark Udall lie:

"This is just another indication of the deep support Mark [ Udall ] has earned among Colorado's working families all across the state -- and we didn't have to sneak behind closed doors to embrace a president who is totally out of step with Colorado voters to do it," [ Mike ] Melanson said.

Mark Udall went to Daily Kos in California to raise funds. While Kos is in step with the folks in Boulder, there is no possibility that either Mark Udall or Mike Melanson will claim that he is in step with Colorado values.

The reason Mark Udall is being so obstinate about refusing to clean up the pine bark beetle mess is that he is getting so much money from the Sierra Club and its allies. Time will tell if the voters will decide they like their forests brown, dead, and burned as Mark Udall's major funders do. Who is raising funds from people who are out of step with Colorado? We think it is Mark Udall.

Still Dragging His Feet - And Lying About It

We've called Mark Udall a liar before. He doesn't just tell little lies. He tells big lies on the Hitler theory that if you make the lie big enough and repeat it often enough, people will believe it.

Today, in the Rocky Mountain News, he was quoted as saying:

"I have been sounding the alarm on the beetle and wildfire risk problem for our forests since my first year in Congress," Udall said Wednesday evening.

Mark Udall has been a Sierra Club toady since his first year in congress. The Sierra Club's position on wild fire risk was to oppose thinning until the Hayman fire in Colorado.

By pure chance, the Hayman burn area included a small experimental area where thinning had occurred. The fire didn't burn hot enough to kill the trees in that area while the other, unthinned areas burned so hot that the soil was fused and even the roots were consumed.

That demonstrated that the Sierra Club had been wrong to oppose thinning, so they modified their position slightly. Instead of coming out against thinning, they went to court to oppose the road building that would have made thinning possible.

Mark Udall has aided the Sierra Club with their mindless roadless policy. Last year, he was the author of roadless legislation.

Even the bills he just introduced do not propose thinning. They propose studying thinning.

What is needed now is clear cut fire breaks and the forest roads that would permit the dead wood to be hauled out. Without fire breaks, the dead forest will burn until it runs into natural fire breaks, and it will burn hot. Mark Udall isn't ready to propose that, nor is he willing to propose a total relaxation of timbering restrictions in areas that will die anyway.

The sad thing is that Mark Udall and his partner in this crime against Colorado, John Salazar won't even fight hard to see this legislation pass. To do so would risk the funding flow from Sierra Club members in California who don't have to look at the dead trees or fear running for their lives in a fire.

Mark Udall's campaign motto should be "Burn Colorado, Burn."

And the big blue lie machine churns on.

Cleaning Up The Forests

Mark Udall is opposed to cleaning up the forests. It would require building forest roads. Heaven forbid!

Today, the Rocky Mountain News made a proposal to remove dead timber that will never be allowed to happen, and it admits as much:

But these productive solutions are possible on a large scale only if federal and state lawmakers act quickly to provide the economic assistance and regulatory relief needed to develop viable commercial applications of significant scope.

As unpopular as it may be with some groups, [ and politicians like Mark Udall, John Salazar, Bill Ritter, and Ken Salazar ] relaxing certain zoning and environmental restrictions is as critical as finding funds for new machinery or other start-up costs. Removing barriers to quick production is essential because of the natural timetable at work in Colorado's forests.

The Rocky didn't go far enough. Forest access roads must be built and maintained. Clear cuts must be established as fire breaks. Environmentalist terrorists like Mark Udall and his Sierra Club must be put on notice that their foot dragging won't be tolerated. Does anyone have the courage to do that? Not likely, unless it is the voters.

And Still There Will Be No Roads

In an article that the Gazette did not put on the Internet it reported:

Every large, mature lodgepole pine forest in Colorado and Southern Wyoming will be dead within three to five years...

In an effort to dodge blame, Mark Udall and his wild eyed allies in the environmentalist movement have claimed that this is a natural event, happening every 150 years. The US Forest Service disagrees:

Rick Cables, the US Forest service's regional supervisor described the die-off as "a huge, unprecedented event with major social and economic implications.

Perhaps most at stake are the state's water supplies. A lack of soil cover and the potential for forest fires as the dying trees dry out could leave reservoirs and rivers clogged with sediment more likely to pour off the landscape.

It is time for Mark Udall and his Sierra Club allies to recognize that this disaster needs to be managed, and that it cannot be managed without a reasonable access to the trees. That means roads. They supposedly love wilderness but don't much care if it is green or brown.

A Line in the Scrubland

The GJ Sentinel's number 7 top story of the year was Roan Plateau an emblem of energy debate.

It had a sentence that we found interesting:

Though the plateau is already being drilled from nearby private lands and the BLM’s plan was highly restrictive, conservationists made the land mass their “symbolic” line in the sand, Congressman Mark Udall, D-Colo., said in August.

We found a copy of the original article that this quote referred to. It was titled "Udall vows to keep up fight over Roan drilling."

Udall, who sponsored an amendment to the 2007 energy bill barring the Bureau of Land Management from leasing parcels atop the Roan, said if the measure fails to make the final version of the bill, he and Congressman John Salazar, D-Colo., will continue to fight to halt development...

“I think at heart of our point of view is we’re not going to stop,” Udall said. “We’re not going to quit. We’re not going to give up.

“We think this is the right thing to do, and we’ll look for other ways to keep that 50 percent of the top of the Roan that’s public lands off limits to surface occupancy.”

One of the more interesting lines in that older article was an apparent proposal by Mark Udall to open up American coastal waters to drilling:

There’s so much other area in which we can drill and produce additional fuels to do our part,” Udall said of energy independence.

He said the United States needs to look outside Colorado — to developing coastal areas or renewable energy sources — to fuel domestic energy needs.

We wonder if Mark Udall's Sierra Club contributors have seen this. We'd bet not.

More Poorly Thought Out Udall Legislation

The Denver Post is reporting that Mark Udall dropped more bills in the hopper just before the end of the session:

"You can never start soon enough," said Alan Salazar, chief of staff to Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs. With the presidential election next year, he said, passing bills could become difficult.

"So the sooner you get things done, the easier it is," Salazar said...

Udall also offered one to match a bill from Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. That one would require Interior Department agencies and the Forest Service to give Congress an annual report on firefighter safety practices, training programs and actions to prevent fires, including prescribed burnings.

On the one hand, Mark Udall champions all of the Sierra Club policies (no road building, no thinning, no firebreaks) which promote huge, hot forest fires and make it hard to do any forest management. Now, he wants a firefighter safety report!

Udall's comprehensive forest fire fighting philosophy makes as much sense as choosing to arm a battalion of soldiers with pistols and then requiring the battalion commander to report how many of his men were killed by rifle fire.

Big Blue Lie Machine In Action

Of the 500 or so YouTube views of the new Democrat ad against Bob Schaffer, we're responsible for at least 25.

The Roan Plateau segment just didn't look right. There is so much blue water and white snowcaps in their photograph that it looks pristine, beautiful, and, well . . . wet!

Most of western Colorado simply doesn't look like that most of the time. It is arid, with little in the way of trees because there isn't much moisture to support them. It is no accident that the Bureau of Land Management owns places like the Roan Plateau. When the west was settled, no one else wanted them because they were too dry to support even dry land farming.

Pull up Google Earth and enter "Roan Plateau." Compare what Google Earth shows to what this new commercial shows. You will see that it is not the idyllic place that the Big Blue Lie Machine and the Sierra Club would have you believe.

It is hard to believe that anyone thinks Mark Udall can expect to be elected when, in this internet era, it is so easy to chase down and expose the lies being told by him and for him.

Opposition to Roan Drilling Falling Apart?

We get the impression that the Sierra Club is becoming concerned that Mark Udall may have expended a lot of political capital on its behalf to no avail.

The Glenwood Springs Post Independent reports:

Salazar's silence has left those involved in the Roan debate to speculate about what a key player on the issue might be thinking.

"He's sort of on the fence on this because he's being hammered daily by industry and industry groups and people," said Glenwood Springs resident Bob Millette, chair of the Roaring Fork Group of the Sierra Club. "He's not hearing enough from the other side."

Club 20, the Western Slope non partisan political powerhouse favors drilling, as does Wayne Allard.

Reeves Brown, executive director of Club 20, a lobbying group for the Western Slope, hopes Salazar may be giving due consideration to proper process. Both Club 20 and U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., have said the years of planning and public input that led to the BLM's decision to allow drilling on the top of the plateau should be honored rather than trumped by a political process.

Brown said it can be harder for senators than House members to be parochial in their political views and focus only on what's best for their backyards. They are not elected to represent a congressional district, but the state as a whole. As a result, Salazar may be more inclined to consider the Roan's natural gas reserves as well as its environmental and other values.

And, it turns out that even the Governor hasn't really come out in opposition to drilling in a way that the environmentalists would like.

[ Bill ] Ritter never has come out in opposition to drilling on the Roan but has said it is one of the last places that drilling should be allowed to occur.

That leaves Mark Udall hopeful, but not confident:

Asked about Salazar's silence on the Roan amendment, Udall said in a prepared statement, "I have no doubt that Senator Salazar shares his brother John's and my concern about the Roan Plateau. What is important right now is not making speeches, but working inside the halls of Congress - talking to the leadership and to the senators and representatives who will be helping shape the final version of the energy legislation."

Perhaps we are reading more into the report than is there. Check it out and decide for yourself.

Topic of the Day: Forest Fires-Part 1

Last night, 60 minutes had a story about the rise in intensity of forest fires in the US in the last decade. Missing from the story was any mention of the part that the Sierra Club and other organizations that claim to be interested in the environment have played in this disaster.

No mention was made of any of those organization's efforts to convert as many acres of forest as possible to roadless wilderness where fire fighting and insect mitigation are difficult to impossible.

No mention was made of the part politicians like Mark Udall have played in an effort to ensure that the forest service can not easily approve thinning even in areas that can be managed. His support, along with Diana DeGette, and John Salazar of roadless wilderness areas that can't be managed in any way wasn't mentioned, either.

In short, unlike most stories where 60 minutes is quick to assign blame, these forest fires are a natural phenomena that can be blamed on "global warming." The environmentalist extremists are blameless.

The largest fire this year was 600,000 acres. That is 1000 square miles. Another this year was 500,000 acres. Fires of 200,000 acres, once rare, are now commonplace.

If "global warming" is causing these fires and greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are causing global warming, one wonders why 60 minutes couldn't make the connection between the megatons of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere by these fires and the environmentalist extremist communities' refusal to allow reasonable forest management.

60 minutes did report one fact that was new to this author: Half of the area burned was so badly damaged that it won't be reforested in the foreseeable future. That will have a serious impact on water supplies.

Nice Job, Mark! Keep those campaign checks coming from the Sierra Club and its allies.

Mark Udall, A Practiced Liar

It should make people outside Colorado angry when they read a statement like the one Mark Udall recently issued promoting his very limited bill to thin Colorado forests:

“As quickly as the beetle epidemic is spreading throughout Colorado, the needs related to forest health and fuel reduction in our national forests are vast and urgent. These funds are critically important for the health and safety of our forests and communities--and ultimately the west, as Colorado stands at the source of life giving rivers that can be impacted by our unbalanced forest condition," said Rep. Mark Udall.

That statement is very impressive until one realizes that Udall's bill does nothing to promote fuel reduction in "our national forests" except close in to mountain towns. In fact, he and the Sierra Club strongly oppose "promoting forest health and fuel reduction" in our national forests

Colorado, as Udall correctly states, is at the source of rivers that can be impacted by "our unbalanced forest condition." Neither Mark Udall nor his environmentalist extremists give a whit about those rivers or the 17 downriver states they irrigate. Instead of allowing the management of the forests in a way that would protect those rivers, Udall wants to make the forests into wilderness areas that cannot, by law, be managed.

Udall's bill does allow and fund very limited fuel reduction near Colorado ski towns and some very local watersheds. No roads are to be built. His goal is to get elected US Senator. Having ski areas burned out before the election wouldn't help. That is why he is so willing to give the Sierra club what it wants while publicly pretending his bill does something it doesn't do.

Thinking the Implications All the Way Through

The environmentalist left, personified by the Sierra Club and it's poster boy, Mark Udall, has adopted a strategy of allowing forest fires to burn, not only burn, but burn hot.

He and they don't want there to be forest roads which might be used to thin forests to prevent severe burn overs that put a crust on the soil. Crusted soil, like that in the Hayman burn area make it difficult to reforest the area. Estimates are that it will take 700 years before that area is fully restored.

Yes, Udall has sponsored a bill to thin near mountain communities. That is a half measure intended to protect him from criticism should there be the large scale property loss that would accompany a fire near one of those communities. He was careful to assure the environmentalist left that the thinning would be very limited.

Now, his allies at Colorado Confidential are reporting that forest fires release large amounts of mercury into the atmosphere:

"The mercury in the forest is not harming anything,. But when a fire releases it from the vegetation and the soils, it comes down again, precipitated in rain or snow, where it may end up in a body of water. There it gets converted in methyl mercury. That's what we're concerned about. The more fires we have, the more mercury will end up in the waterways," [ NCAR scientist Hans Friedli ] says."

This is one more argument for forest thinning. It demonstrates once again that the Sierra Club, Mark Udall, and the rest of the environmentalist left can't seem to think the policies they want to impose on the rest of us all of the way, or even part of the way through.

Not So Fast

California sued six auto companies for manufacturing vehicles that create greenhouse gasses. It was a lawsuit that only the Sierra Club and Mark Udall could have loved. The Gazette had a very good editorial on it today.

U.S. District Judge Martin J. Jenkins ruled that the courts aren’t the venue to settle arguments over how much automobiles contribute to greenhouse gases, which the state contends damage the environment by heating the atmosphere. Congress and the federal Environmental Protection Agency are the proper bodies to take up that issue, the judge ruled.

The state asked the court to “balance the competing interests of reducing global-warming emissions and the interests of advancing and preserving economic and industrial development.” But “balancing of those competing interests is the type of initial policy determination to be made by the political branches, not this court,” Jenkins wrote.

Anyone who thinks that the issue is closed hasn't remembered that the 9th Circus will have its say. This will very likely be settled in the Supreme Court.

It is time to think about the kind of Justice that Mark Udall would vote to confirm if he were in the Senate. Would he want a Justice who allowed states to destroy major industries in court on questionable science, or would he require, as Judge Jenkins did, that the issue be settled by the Congress. History suggests that Udall would choose to try to destroy the economy through court action.

Annoy Mark Udall and the Sierra Club today. THINK!