Sunday, May 10, 2009

Stand-up For Freedom

The other day I heard a lady say, wreathing her hands, “What can we do about the direction the country is heading?”.


A lot of us are asking ourselves that question today. For my part, I’ve decided to speak out at every opportunity when I see our freedom under attack. One way we can do that is to join in public demonstrations which broadcast our displeasure with the direction being taken by government. Another is to let our lawmakers know our views when we have concerns about an issue.



One such issue of concern to me and should be to those of you who have the privilege of living in the Lake of the Ozarks area is the potential harm that could be done to the lake by the quarry proposed by the Magruder Company. But an even bigger concern and one that should be shared by all who love freedom is the domination by state government in their favoring of the mining industry over the rights of citizens.



I attended one of the court hearings in the legal battle between Concerned Citizens and the Magruder Company and was appalled to see that the lead attorney for Magruder was an attorney representing the Bureau of Land Reclamation (a part of Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources). But I guess I should not have been because the DNR Hearing Officer in all the proceeding hearings had been so obviously biased against the citizens that it was an embarrassment to those in attendance.



The Concerned Citizens and the local government lost in the DNR hearings in their appeal to have the Magruder permit rescinded. But they have since won in four successive judicial rulings that have resulted in the reversal of the permitting of this quarry.



But Magruder has not given up and, with the help of the Missouri State Attorney’s office, have filed yet another appeal to have their permit re-issued. Why in the world is the State of Missouri providing free legal services to private industry? This is a costly battle for the private citizens who have banded together in the battle and for the city of Osage Beach which has joined them in these efforts to protect the Lake of the Ozarks.



Mayor Penny Lyons of Osage Beach voiced her concern which you can read in

the article which appeared in the May 8, 2009 issue of the Lake Sun Leader.




Our legislators and governor need to be urged to change the current laws and regulations which favor this industry over the welfare of citizens of the state. Ted Windels of the Concerned Citizens Group has provided a list of

Needed recommendations.

In addition, you can find a list of who to contact and

How to contact them here.




Let’s all stand up and fight for the values and freedom upon which this nation was founded.



Lake of the Ozarks Freedom Fighte

Monday, April 14, 2008

America’s Energy Independence Future

Memories of Long Ago.
I remember spending several weeks as a ten year old child with my favorite cousin, aunt and uncle on their farm in southwest Missouri, near the little town of Liberal. That would mean the year was 1947 and about a year before I would subsequently destroy my eyes in that same small town. But that’s another story.

Uncle Clyde and Aunt Maybelle were like my second parents and I loved them dearly. Cousin Charles was like my big brother but close enough to my own age to be a good buddy. Even though I was a city boy I delighted in following Charles around and helping him with the many chores that fell on the shoulders of a farmer’s son. I took even greater delight in “helping” Uncle Clyde with his work and he would let me ride along with him on the tractor as he toiled the fields.

One day he asked me, “I’m gonna go down to the old creek bed and make a big bang. Want to come along?” “Sure”, I said, not really knowing what he meant. So I tagged along with him as he gathered up some material and took it with him to the tractor; “Why walk when we can ride?” he chuckled as we bounced along on the rocky ground. The destination was only a few minutes from the house, even on the slowly moving tractor. “Looky here”, he said as he pointed to a pool of oily rocks. “Wow!” I exclaimed, “did you find oil?” “Naw, not really, but let’s see what happens when I blow into those rocks.” After he had hacked away for awhile with a pick-ax and then took a stick of dynamite from the tractor tool box, I realized what he had in mind. He pushed the dynamite stick as far into the muck as he could, lit the fuse, and yelled, “Let’s get out of here and over behind that tree.” “Bang!” It was a bang alright but I had expected something a lot more spectacular. I rushed over to the oily rock area, expecting to see oil gushing from the ground.

All I saw were a few more oily rocks and tar than I had seen before. “Do you think there’s real oil down there Uncle Clyde?” “naw, not really. Oil men have been here and they say what’s here ain’t possible to get out. Just part of the rocks.” I was disappointed because I’d had visions of gaining a rich uncle.

Many Years Later.
That day was almost 61 years ago and I have thought little about it since. Until today. Today I came across a web-based press release with the title,“MegaWest Commences Operations of Deerfield, Missouri Enhanced Oil Recovery Project” As the crow flies, Deerfield Missouri is probably not much more than 20 miles from Uncle Clyde’s farm. There is oil there and it has taken only 60 years to make it worth going after. Oil in Missour? You betcha! And lots of it. But the oil in Missouri is barely a drop in the bucket of the heavy oil in all the United States and that is only a drop in the bucket compared to the heavy oil in Canada. What surprised me most about this press release is not that such oil exists in Missouri, but that recovery operations are actually under way and production is expected to commence within the year. Isn’t it amazing what $100 a barrel oil will do?

Heavy Oil Reserves:
It has been estimated that known heavy oil reserves exceed known conventional oil reserves by five to one and that 80% of that heavy oil is located in Canada, Venezuela, and the United States. ( Reference source: Petroleum Equities Inc.) According to this reference, if only half the known reserves reach production, the Canadian and US reserves alone would suffice these two countries’ petroleum needs for 150 years. (Current US usage is about 7.5 billion barrels a year.) Production has become more economically feasible with new technology and the current high price of crude assures a boom in heavy oil recovery.

Oil Shale:
And then, there’s oil shale in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. This is also a potential source of new petroleum reserves but technology and economics are not yet available to make this source immediately viable. But it’s there. It’s like money in the bank for our nation’s future needs. The recoverable oil from those three states alone would add more than another 100 years to our nation’s oil supply needs. (Reference, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG414.sum.pdf)

Today’s Faltering Economy.
Now, what does Ozarkcountry Common Sense tell you? It tells me that the recent housing bust slowed down the economy a bit. But if it had not been for the sky-rocketing cost of oil the housing problem would have been little more than a blip in our economy. But now our nation is bleeding. And the bleeding is not so much because of the high price of oil, but because those petrol dollars are being handed over to foreign nations, most of which are our current or potential enemies. Well-meaning but misguided environmentalists further aggravate the problem by standing in the way of drilling for conventional oil off-shore and in Alaska. This bleeding of America plays right into the hands of Gore and the sheep that blindly follow his religion of man-caused global warming.

Hope For the Future.
Don’t be downhearted, don’t despair. Ozarkcountry Common Sense tells you that the American people are smarter than Gore; those who have been blinded will awaken and see again. They will recognize that the current world’s wheels turn on oil and that there is no quick alternative; time and technology will provide for the future. Meanwhile, once again, the entrepreneurs of the New World will respond to the current oil crunch and this nation will regain its energy-rich prosperity. Unless evil OPEC once again recognizes the threat and drastically reduces its oil prices to discourage our more expensive oil production, we will never again see “cheap” oil. But that’s OK, you’ll get used to it and you and our nation can live with it so long as those new petrol dollars end up in places like Missouri.

Ozarkcountry Man says, “God bless you and God bless America”.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Fidel Climbs On Bandwagon

When it comes to scare tactics, Al Gore now looks like a real amateur. You and I might think the use of ethanol as an alternative fuel is a good idea, right? Will it reduce our use of imported oil and will it reduce air pollution? And, will it not even reduce the atmospheric CO2 said to be the root cause of catastrophic global warming?

Well, if you answered "yes" to the above questions, maybe you need to pay close attention to yesterday's words from Fidel Castro as quoted exactly below:

More than 3 billion people are being condemned to premature death from hunger and thirst

Tuesday, April 3, 2007
By: Fidel Castro

Capitalism will not meet human needs.

It is not an exaggeration; this is rather a conservative figure. I have meditated for quite a long time on that after the meeting held by President Bush with the U.S. automakers.

The sinister idea of turning foodstuffs into fuel was definitely established as the economic strategy of the U.S. foreign policy on Monday, March 26th last...

Fidel goes on to inform the world that Cuba has all but eliminated their "carbon footprint" by switching from incandescent to florescent bulbs. Ozark common sense seems to have eluded the Cuban dictator as it has certain of our own former almost presidents.

But there are some serious questions regarding the rush toward ethanol, and I, as did Fidel, plan to meditate on it before further comment here.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Global Cooling Is Back

I don't know about you, but the increased hype scare-mongering about global warming has convinced me that warming really is occurring. But the source of that warming is my blood boiling. There is no definitive evidence that man is causing an increase in global warming. Sure, the climate is changing. That's what climate does. There are and always have been periodic swings within the overall trends, but it should be as obvious as the nose on your face that ice-ages are followed by periods of global warming and we are still recovering from the ice-age of 14,000 years ago. Why do you think the glaciers that at one time covered much of the northern United States have since retreated to the Arctic region? And this slow warming trend will continue, remain relatively constant, or reverse toward another ice-age as God has intended.

But Mr. Gore, the new high-priest of the Church of the Most High Green and his loyal army of activist believers continue to wail about eminent doom unless you and I commence immediately to abandon our cars in favor of walking and bikes, exchange our clothes-driers for a clothes-line, our washing machines for a scrub-board, and our electric lights for stumbling around in the dark. And keeping us in the dark is exactly what he and his cohorts want as they use this phony new environmentalist religion as their vehicle for establishing one-world government with them as controlling rulers. Hey Americans, wake up! What happened to that great independent, freedom-loving spirit of 1776?

These Greens have even called global warming the capitalist's weapon of mass destruction. The Greens weapon of mass destruction is the liberal media and they have used these willing servants effectively and constantly to brainwash the masses into accepting their lie as gospel truth. One lie that is repeated loudly and often is that the scientific community is over-whelmingly in agreement with the Gore exaggerations. Nothing could be further from the truth but if a lie is told often enough it has been shown time and time again that the lie will be accepted as truth. Many eminent scientists are speaking out in opposition to this exaggerated lie of man-caused global warming and these brave souls are being crucified for their honesty. More and more we are seeing scientist converts from the Gore-Global-Warming church seeing the light of truth and recanting their support for the Gore Greens.

Most recently, Bjarne Andersen, professor at the renowned Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, has pointed out that the basic premise behind the current global change (remember, 30 years ago it was global cooling and today it's global warming) of an increase in the average temperature of the earth is, in itself, an invalid concept. The March 18, 2007 web issue of Science Daily states "Discussions on global warming often refer to 'global temperature.' Yet the concept is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility, says Bjarne Andresen, a professor at The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, who has analyzed this topic in collaboration with professors Christopher Essex from University of Western Ontario and Ross McKitrick from University of Guelph, Canada...."

The current hype has been propelled into particularly prominent head-lines because of the recently issued summary report of the IPCC (a United Nations organization), the Academy Awards given the Gore sci-fi movie, and Gore's appearance before Congress. Gore talks about temperature increases of up to 20 degrees but even the IPCC has scaled this back to a relatively insignificant level. The latest published information I could find from the United Nations in their Vital Climate Graphics report
states the following: " The mean global surface temperature has increased by about 0.3 to 0.6°C since the late 19th century and by about 0.2 to 0.3°C over the last 40 years, which is the period with most reliable data. Recent years have been among the warmest since 1860 - the period for which instrumental records are available." While this report does not cover any of the 21st century, it does show that, if there is indeed an increase in global warming during the last century, it has been very slight. But the key to me in the UN report is the statement, "...the period for which instrumental records are available..." This certainly implies that even they put little faith in the accuracy of temperature estimates made for periods prior to 1860.

But the scare tactics never stop. The latest is a report from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory that has the liberal media lackeys barking headlines of pending world starvation. The headlines shriek, "Cereal Fields Produce Less Due To Global Warming" as they go on to state from the report that "... Fields of wheat, corn and barley throughout the world have produced a combined 40 million metric tons less per year from 1981 to 2002 because of increasing temperatures caused by human activities, said the study ..." As I read said report the words that kept jumping into my mind were "figures don't lie but liars figure".So I looked up the stats and this is what I found: "In the past decade and a half, agricultural net production increased annually by 2.2%. This growth has been mainly in the developing world which increased output by almost 3.4% per year, while the developed countries increased by just over 0.2% per year.... Food crops gross production went up 2%, but the most important of them, cereals, just 1%". Who are you going to believe? The lying manipulators or the actual figures? The fact of the matter is that food production, including cereal production world wide is up, not down.

Would global warming or global cooling be more disastrous to the world food supply? How many of you are familiar with the nick-name, Little Egypt, given to the southern third of Illinois? Have you ever wondered why? Well, it seems that in the winter of 1830-31 Upper Illinois suffered from a long winter and late spring, so crops were not planted until June, and much of that harvest was killed by an early September frost. Southern Illinois, however, was milder that year and produced grain, much of which was shipped north. I'll bet the people of Chicago in those days were worried sick about global cooling.

But we don't need to go back quite that far to find a period of time when climate extremes posed severe threats to man-kind. There are still some old-timers around who remember the "dust bowl" of the 1930's. "... 'Dust Bowl' was a term born in the hard times from the people who lived in the drought-stricken region during the great depression... The decade was full of extremes: blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and dirt storms." Excerpts from "The Dust Bowl, Men, Dirt and Depression" by Paul Bonnifield. Since Mr. Gore associates global warming with drought I must assume that these drought years were the result of global warming. Temperatures in Oklahoma hit 120 degrees on some of those hot summer days.

Come to think of it, we know there have been temperature extremes and droughts since the beginning of recorded history. Have you heard about the seven year famine that shook the whole civilized world? The incident is described by BBC Weather as follows: "The famine in Egypt in the story of Joseph is a ‘physical famine’, which means that it was caused by the environment’s natural hostility to Egypt’s agriculture. Drought is the most common cause of famine, and it was an unpredictable drought and a sudden change in the state of the climate that would cause the famine in Egypt." Does Mr. Gore realize that he is about 4000 years late in warning us about global warming?

Finally, you have to dig really deep to find this article in a recent issue of Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics titled “Multi-scale analysis of global temperature changes and trend of a drop in temperature in the next 20 years.” I certainly have not and expect not to see any mention of this paper by our liberal media friends. The article was published in a highly respected, peer-reviewed scientific journal and the research was funded by the impartial Chinese National Science Foundation. Read details about the article in World Climate Report. . The authors, Zhen-Shan and Xian gathered temperature data for the globe, the Northern Hemisphere, and 10 regions in China from 1881 to 2002; the datasets they chose are the same ones used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Based on their statistical analysis of this data, they predict that the average global temperature during the next twenty years will drop from its present level. Furthermore, their work demonstrates that although carbon dioxide increase may have a positive effect on temperature increase, the effect will be insufficient to over-come the temperature drop attributable to other natural causes.

What do you think? Ozark common sense tells me that what-ever will be, will be and the future's not ours to see. Put your trust in God.

PS: See below exact quote from
NOAA. "February Temperature: 34th coldest February in the 1895-2007 record. The preliminary nationally averaged temperature was 32.86°F (0.48°C), which was 1.84°F (1.02°C) below the 1901-2000 (20th century) mean."

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Common Sense and Man-made Global Warming

Even Ozarker common sense can become befuddled sometimes, particularly when the mind is plummeted with conflicting facts, or so-called facts such as those indicated in the following head-lines I noted this morning:

TED TURNER: Global Warming is 'single greatest challenge that humanity has ever faced'...


GORE: 'Never before has all of civilization been threatened'...


NORTH MICHIGAN EXPERIENCING AMONG TOP 10 COLDEST STARTS TO FEB -- IN LAST 100 YEARS...


Thick Ice Forces Emergency relief for Sweden's starving reindeer...


Mr. Turner recommended that no new coal-fired power plants ever be built in the US. Is it only coincidental that this billionaire is the major investor in DT Solar, a New Jersey company involved in large-scale solar power projects?

And what did Mr. Gore say on February 8 to an audience in Spain? "Emerging economies such as China are justified in holding back on fighting greenhouse gas emissions until richer polluters like the United States do more to solve the problem..." Mr. Gore advocates letting the lights go out for you and me so that this giant emerging economy of China that is already cleaning our clock can grow even richer and stronger. Hmm, the Ozarker common sense is wondering what happened to Mr. Gore's common sense. Wouldn't we expect more from the inventor of the Internet?

We are being bombarded with stories from the liberal media warning of an imminent doomsday because you and I are causing the earth to rapidly approach the heat of Hades. Last week's release by the IPCC of the executive summary of their latest report has sparked even more scare-oriented propaganda. The IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in this report that "it is almost certain..." that humans are the cause for current global warming. But the more I study this issue, the more scientists I find who disagree with the view that humans are the major cause of climate change and who, in fact, also disagree that we are currently undergoing any abnormal trend toward global warming. Even some of the scientists working with the IPCC on the research have objected to the summary report,
stating that it is a political statement rather than a technical summary. In support of this, they voice their objection to the fact that the actual technical report has been withheld for at least an additional three months so that it can be "...edited to comply with the summary report..."
See report.


Ozarker common sense also makes it hard to worry about global warming when we are currently freezing our tails off. While we here in Ozark country are having trouble trying to stay warm, we get little comfort knowing it's a lot colder for our orthern neighbors. Northern Michigan is experiencing among the top 10 starts for February in the last 100 years. For example, at Houghton Lake Michigan the average mperature for the first week of February is 5.2 degrees F whereas this year it has been –7.6. The weather reports, if you can believe long-term climate forecasts a week ahead, are that the cold snap will continue. Come to think of it, if you can't believe weather reports a week ahead, how can you believe them 75 years ahead? Does this not also stretch our common sense when it comes to forecasts of dire consequential global warming?

Has anyone told the reindeer about global warming? Maybe our green environmental friends should turn their attention to the Arctic where the reindeer are starving because they cannot forage through the thick ice to get to their normal food source. The Swedish government is granting millions of dollars to the native reindeer herding people to provide food for these animals because of the unusually severe conditions. It is because of conflicting observations like these that most Ozark people I know are intuitively skeptical and relatively immune to the brainwashing of the Gore scare-mongers. That makes me proud of the Ozarker common sense.

Now, using that same common sense, I realize that the industrial revolution that started a century and a half ago along with the ever-increasing human population has no doubt resulted in a huge increase of carbon from the earth back into the atmosphere. But the question is whether or not that increase is sufficient enough to overcome nature's inevitable direction and rate of climate change. The climate has been continually changing every since God created the earth. Hot-house to cold-house to hot-house to ....., you get the idea. It was ever so. No one can question that global warming is occurring, the earth is in its normal cycle of recovery from the last ice-house age. But I think it is highly egotistical of the environmentalists to think that we measly men can have greater effect than the sun and other mighty forces of nature that God uses to control the world's climate.

Debate as to the extent of man's intervention in climate change continues to rage among the scientists. We lay-people can only listen to the arguments and use our own common sense in assessing the relative validities. Your common sense, and mine, are at least as good as that of the most vocal of the loud-mouths, Mr. Gore. The problem, however, is that those loud-mouths have the biggest vocal cords in the
form of the print and television media and over-whelm the public with their one-sided message that would weaken this country's economy and hasten their desired trend toward one-world government. But there does exist an opposing view among many scientists and it can be found if you dig deeply enough. For example, data presented by Prof. Mann has been the back-bone of the IPCC's claims even though a
congressional investigation resulted in a report which found great fault with the Mann data.
See reference

So as not to bore the casual reader with more of the facts of the matter, I have presented them in a separate web page.
If you would like to read more in support of questioning the validity of the IPCC claims, go to
ozarkcountry.com/climate

References and a brief excerpt pertaining to each subject below are presented at that site.

1. IPCC Summary Report Takes Precedence Over Technical Report

2. Earth's Climate Always Changing

3. Glaciers Come and Go

4. Past Earth Temperatures Higher Than Today's

5. Sun Is Major Source Of Global Warming

6. Climate Is Result Of Multiplicity of Complex, Interacting Factors

7. Drastic Weather Changes Nothing New

8. Global Climate Models Omit Significant Seafloor Methane Cycle

9. Global Climate Models Inadequately Account For Southern Ocean.

10.. Global Climate Model Based On Erroneous Antarctic Snowfall Estimate

11. Ocean Organisms Not Taken Into Account In Global Climate Model

12. Russian Scientist Says Greenhouse Gases Not The Culprit

13. Water Is Most Powerful Greenhouse Gas

14. Global Climate Model Based On Erroneous Arctic Soil Carbon Estimate

15. Effect Of Volcanic Eruptions Under-estimated

16. Gain In Antarctic Ice Sheet Belies Global Warming

17. Effect Of Vegetation On Climate Change Too Complex To Model

18. Global Climate Models Incorrectly Predict Temperature Variations

19. Climate Change Is Nature's Way

20. Global Warming Scare Invention Of The Media

21. Man-made Global Warming A Hoax

22. Congressional Hearing Slams Mann Data

23. Climate Record Of Last 14000 Years