Wyoming Dinosaur Ranch Blog

There is nothing like making a U-turn.  Having invested a significant amount of time and resources to a particular path, it seems like our wise voters (some of which can’t tie their own shoes) have arranged to change horses and paths mid-stream.  So there we are.  May the winners save the economy because the options are not good.  Having said that…..

Being blunt, it looks like the Obama administration is Clinton 2.0 with all his senior advisors being drawn from old Washington types with a great deal of ideological zeal and experience in promoting same.  I had my issues with Clinton mostly related to stains on the floor of the oval office but he was a fairly moderate centrist as a result of his intense reliance of polls.  The difference between Clinton 1.0 and 2.0 is that the balance of power that was in effect during the Clinton Administration is non-existent now (in the Obama admin.) with the far left running the congress (at least on the leadership level).  The Democratic Rubric of Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country has certainly been reworked into “Ask what your country can do for you”.  This will certainly lead to problems if left unchecked over a period of time.

It seems there is going to be a very major reworking of entitlements, taxes and jobs, essentially giving more than 50 percent of the voting block these benefits.  Thusly ensuring a power base that is happy to be essentially paid for their vote.  We begin to follow the road first tread by the Roman Empire where the productive people started to feed the majority of the population who by that time were entitlement drunk followed by a very rapid decline in the society.  It is likely that we have not learned from history and our horse is heading in that direction.

By necessity, the first few years of the Obama administration will be spent trying to deal with the economic tornado that is spinning out of control world wide.  This will delay and distract all involved from some very touchy subjects indeed but there will be casualties of principles that we have lived under since the inception of our country.

The total buy into Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) by the new administration just about guarantees that numerous productive segments of our economy will fail due to government intervention into just about every aspect of energy production.  The coal industry will be a victim along with petroleum production.  The enormity of the production/distribution system for those two industries is highly underappreciated by policy makers who flippantly say “we will bankrupt coal plants before they are built”.  Cap and Trade is the worst idea I have heard in my lifetime.  The ONLY hope we have is that some new energy technology is invented that enables America to provide a new industry on shore that replaces the jobs lost due to the AGW buy in and resultant bad policy decisions.

Ranchers will essentially go out of business due to the cattle fart tax that the EPA is proposing due to the perceived danger to our climate as a result of the cattle’s contribution of methane.  You couldn’t make this stuff up either.  The idea is so ludicrous to be funny if the impact wasn’t so serious and immediate.  The food production decline by taxing cattle is very predictable.  Grass fed cattle supply a huge amount of income to this country and is a huge industry to itself.  The farmers of america feed the huge number of urban folks who would be unable to feed themselves otherwise.

The feel good gun control measures of Clinton 1.0 will be reinstated.  The crime rate will go up as the economy continues to tank so more measures will be instituted and the vicious cycle will continue.  Good people should be able to own firearms, bad people shouldn’t and having a clueless bureaucrat decide which gun is good or bad is fools play.  Obama’s hiring practice of asking if an applicant has firearms or not will ensure that only firearm ignorant individuals will be making policy.

Going from a capitalist supply side economy to from the bottom up socialist economy is the biggest change or direction that we could have possibly made.  To have Bush enact the initial stages of this ongoing process blew me away.  I suspect that he was reacting to the gloom and doom being told to him by his advisors and had little choice.  Obviously there was a lack of accurate data available.  It will be interesting to see what history has to say about that.  Obama is continuing the gloom and doom talk in order to get the ducks lined up for what ever his advisors dream up.  History will also judge him.

So, in effect, the new administration plans to reduce food production, move strategic industries out of the country or drive them out of existence entirely.  Hold on to your wallets! I hereby make a prediction that the throw away society of the 80′s 90′s and last decade, become a society where things start getting repaired instead of replaced.  The age of the TV repairman returns, the Cubans tendency to repair cars over and over again moves to America.  No longer will we have the prosperity to just replace what is broken.  How many people do you the that darn socks anymore.  Heck just go to WalMart and buy new ones.  This may too change.  The periods of prosperity we have enjoyed are about to change to austerity.

What can the driver at the head of this be thinking as he heads us into the ditch.

Copyright 2006
More cries of Global Warming in the News.  One of our Ex-Vice Presidents is even on the band wagon tooting his horn.  There is no question that we are enjoying warm/ dry summer temperatures that relate to the latest cycle of drought that mother nature has provided us. I seems that this year’s drought is a continuation of the one that started in the late 1990s.  The 1999 to 2006 drought now ranks only behind the 1930s and the 1950s which make the current weather equal to the third worst drought on historical record in northeastern Wyoming. Ground zero of this drought is just east of here in south central North Dakota downto central South Dakota.
The drought of the 1950′s lasted five years and affected much of the central and southern Great Plains.  The 1930′s Dust Bowl lasted about seven years.  It actually effected almost 70 percent of the land area of the United States. Much more severe central continent prehistorical droughts, (known from tree ring data, lake/river/sand dune sediment analysis, and archaeological evidence)occurred from 1580 to 1600 and the last quarter of the 13th century.  The good new is that prior to the 13th century, droughts were MORE severe/MORE frequent and LONGER lasting than now.  Apparently a long term moderating trend is underway.
No matter from what the cause of the hotter planet, (man made ornatural cycle) a warmer world will experience greater hydrologic extremes.  Warmer land will evaporate water faster than the ocean (which warms more slowly) which will lag behind providing enough water vapor to balance the cycle. Precipitation will not keep up with evaporation and therefore more droughts are predicted on a warmer planet.
I emphasize that all weather is local and anyone predicting weather 50 years is the future has a problem.  I dare any forecaster to predict the temperature next Christmas Day to a degree let alone predicting that global temperature will rise by X number of degreesin 100 years.  Take it from a non-biased earth scientist that you should not believe propagandistic “documentaries” that make claims on the causes of “global warming”.  In the 1970′s, the big story was that we were going into a new ice age.  Nature is full of cycles but it isn’t always easy to see them.  Some researchers are more predictable base on their funding cycles.  Research is big business.
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