Carbon and global warming thoughts.

COUNTRYSIDE: This is in response to Jerri Cook's article in the Sept./Oct. issue. I was delighted to hear that farmers are going to be encouraged to put carbon back into their soils. When I was going to school in agriculture back in the 1970s, we were taught it was a poor use of time to put manure back out on the ground. Farming with the idea of improving the soil instead of using it up has always made sense, unless you only counted the yearly bottom line. Take that manure back out on the field where it came from. Plow down that green cover crop. Bravo, to those that do it and encourage it.

So far as paying for carbon credits, the whole thing is probably the greatest scam that has ever been perpetrated on the people of the world. The places that claim to be providing carbon credits were growing things before this whole thing got started.

Global warming is not an accepted fact as many of the fanatics lead everybody to believe. Often they have stretched the truth or left out important information to draw conclusions. It turns out that 1998 was not the warmest year on record, 1934 was. They forget to tell you the records have been kept for only a little over 100 years. They fail to report that Mars and other planets they can get readings off of have increased by the same temperature as they are reading for the Earth. This Earth has gone through several warming and cooling cycles through the ages and will continue to do so. There was what has come to be known by most scientists, a mini-ice-age (Ed. note: Little Ice Age, 1550-1850). That is when glaciers were formed in Glacier National Park. When Erik the Red settled Greenland just before the year 1000, there was a long warm period throughout Europe and probably the rest of the globe. It accounted for Greenland's name and a very productive and rich time in many places of the world.

There is an old saying: "follow the money." There are going to be a few that will get very wealthy while others gain a lot of power. The rest of us are going to lose freedom and our money. If the government steps in and starts requiring carbon credits the only goods any of us will be able to afford are the ones made in China.

The panic over petroleum use has already started to jack our food prices up. If you think prices are high now, wait until the government gets control. I can capitalize on some of the insanity as my cows are grass fattened and the grass won't cost me any more but beef prices have already gone up. I don't begrudge the family farmer a little extra money but that is not who is going to end up with the wealth and the power. Hang on because it looks like we are going to get stuck again.--Paul Strong, Bigfork, Montana