Weekly Posting of the Conservative Cow Doctor

 

The Perfect Storm

Last Wednesday I spoke to Ross, a rancher in the Flathead country. Amazingly, western Montana is suffering from a severe drought and his area has not received measurable moisture in the previous 45 days—certainly a different picture than we are seeing east of the continental divide. On Saturday, May 21st, I had the honor of delivering the commencement address to the nine graduates of Turner High School. My trophy wife and I drove north out of Laurel through Roundup, Grass Range, Hays and Harlem before reaching Turner 255 miles later. The rain was incredible. If you were a courageous rafter not intimidated by Class IV rivers cross-fenced with barbed wire, EVERY gully along our entire route offered fresh, uncharted whitewater. With my curiosity tweaked by the downpour, I ran some numbers on my calculator as I drove home. (Only texting is dangerous while driving—calculating is perfectly safe.)

Roughly 87,333 square miles of Montana lies east of the continental divide. If we assume it received nine inches of rain in May, and many places received more (some a lot more) it calculates to be over 41 million acre-feet of water. Let me put a face on the size of that puddle. Montana’s Flathead Lake covers 191 square miles and its maximum known depth is 370 feet. If we assumed it was cone-shaped, Flathead Lake would contain 15 million acre-feet of water, so eastern Montana received a volume of water 2.7 times the amount in Flathead Lake. (As I write this, two more inches of rain are forecast for Memorial Day, so I’ll have to recalculate things next week.)

With the extensive property damage and tragic loss of life due to the flooding here in Montana, and similarly with the tornados in the Midwest, expect to see climate change followers renew calls for carbon taxes and higher governmental regulation to re-establish climate balance. Prostituting tragedy to advance a political agenda is unconscionable and their hysteria forces me to address “climate change” one more time.

I think we can all agree the science concerning man caused “climate change” has proven it to be a fraud, so from that commonality let us deepen our consensus. (That sentence was me reaching across the aisle.) In the 1970s, environmentalists claimed western capitalism was causing global cooling and warned us about the impending ice age. By the 1990s, the earth had naturally warmed so the same extremists switched positions and claimed man caused greenhouse gas emissions were now causing global warming. No one noticed this 180 degree flip-flop, and global warming promoters cashed in on carbon-credit exchanges—a device of their creation. (Al Gore is now a very wealthy man.) When the earth began cooling in 2005, “global climate change” then became the brilliant new catch phrase and suddenly the actual movement of global temperatures became meaningless—if they could accurately be measured at all. Suddenly, any tragic weather event fell under the “climate change” label and every tornado, flood, hurricane, blizzard, drought, or tsunami, could be blamed on western capitalism. Figuratively and ironically, “climate change” was the perfect storm.

Universities have become institutions of higher indoctrination, and an entire generation of students has pledged blind allegiance to “climate change”. College students of the 70s, 80s and 90s have now matured into positions of influence in universities, journalism and politics. Now they educate, propagandize, and set policy. On May 18th, the children of this misled generation, under the name of “Our Children’s Trust”, filed suit in the Montana Supreme Court to force the legislature and state agencies to regulate greenhouse gasses under the guise the atmosphere is a public trust we must manage. Similar lawsuits were filed in all 50 states, but Montana’s Supreme Court was one of the few who took the bait.

Very clearly, this is an attempt by environmentalists to implement carbon taxes and strangulating regulation of domestic energy production using the judicial branch of government because they have been so ineffective in the legislative branch. This is blatantly unconstitutional and we legislators simply cannot allow this to stand. If we do nothing, the Montana Supreme Court’s decision will set precedent for generations. Thus, this will become the fight of the century and yours truly is right in the middle of it. Stay informed. More later…

 
 
 
 
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