Stoney Ski'n

Today was the PERFECT day! Had a half day on the day that God finally decided to let some decent snow fly, enough for cross-country skiing. So naturally, I jumped at this chance. Hopped in the car after I got home and took off for Stoney Run; no running today though, just skiing. After an hour or so there, the snow starting flying and it was absolutely beautiful. Really not much to say about XC ski'n I guess. It's just fun, tiring, but fun. My shoulders and hips are gonna be really sore tomorrow.

"Environmentalists like to lie Pt. 2"

A friend of mine came up to me the other day and we started talking politics as we have been know to occasionally do. The usual outcome is that I am at a loss for words because, in all honesty, it's hard for me to win a political arguement on my feet. For this reason I will try to attempt to win it in writing. The issue this friend of mine brought up was that of a bill that President Bush signed on December 23rd, 2003 calling for the re-opening of "clear-cutting" in Alaska's Tongass National Forest. Sounds pretty bad don't it? It sounds even worse when you read the article that my friend read, that being "The Alaska Chainsaw Massacre", which can be found in the current addition of Rolling Stone magazine. The law which Bush has signed into being calls for 300,000 acres of woodland to be opened up to clear-cutting and for 1,000 miles of roads to be built to accomodate the logging. This also sounds very bad, doesn't it? As you read further, the talks about some of the trees in the area to be some of the biggest and oldest in the land. I don't know about you but I wouldn't want such wonderfully majestic trees to be cut down. And gee, three-hundred thousand acres of woodland sounds like an awful lot! Moreover, they want to build roads! President Bush must be trying to destroy such a beautiful and remote area!

Well if I were to have simply read that one article in Rolling Stone, a magazine I hardly ever even count on for music reviews let alone politics (forming political views based on articles written in entertainment magazines can be a very bad thing), I probably would not even think about voting for Bush come this election year. But, I didn't just read that article and leave it at that. When in question, go to the place with the real answers: the government website with the statistics on the issue, in this case, the Forest Service's website. After reading only 2 pages into the document on Tongass the falsehoods become apparent. In the RS article, they speak of the tall and majestic trees and hint that they would most certainly be cut down because of this plan. But the Forest Service's documents state that: "This rule also leaves intact all old-growth reserves, riparian buffers,
beach fringe buffers, and other protections contained in the 1997 Tongass Forest Plan.". "And what about those 300,000 acres, Rich? That's a lot of trees!" My answer to that: look on a map. How many acres of woodland do you think there are in Alaska? How many roadless areas do you think are already in place? Let's see what the Forest Service has to say "The 16.8-million-acre Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska is approximately 90 percent roadless and undeveloped." ~ Forest Service . Intriguing. Please, Ranger Rick, enlighten us some more. "Alaska has the greatest amount of land and the highest percentage of its land base in conservation reserves of any State." And here's my personal favorite: "About 4 percent of the Tongass is designated suitable for commercial timber harvest, with about half of that area contained within inventoried roadless areas." So let's sum up what we just learned in laymen's terms. Alaska's Tongass National Forest is really friggin' big! Out of 16.8 million acres, an estimated 1.8% (rounded) of it will be used for commercial logging. However, the areas needed for the protection of the forest will remain unharmed. Moreover, Tongass is certainly not the only area that is set aside for preservation of the beautiful Alaskan wilderness. There are a number of extremely large national forests scattered throughout Alaska. There is much more to speak of (such as the positive effect logging would have on the microeconomy of southeast Alaska), however, I can see this article has gone on long enough.


Basically, what I am encouraging everyone to do is not to trust the articles or stories that are shoved in your face by the media. Environmentalists are just like any other group of political activists, they have one thing on their mind. Though they may try to tell you it's the environment, that they want to save the whales, the bald eagles, or the rainforest (another lie I will bitch about some other time), but this simply isn't the truth. Environmentalists want political power, or just plain POWER for that matter. It doesn't matter it they have to lie to get it, it doesn't matter if this lying costs people their jobs, or even their lives (in the case of DDT mentioned a few days ago).... they simply just want the power to control the decision people make. That's all for now, thank you for your time. Below are the addresses of the articles used in my rant. ~ Rich

http://roadless.fs.fed.us/documents/tongass_12302003.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/features/nationalaffairs/featuregen.asp?pid=2761