et me say straight out, I am one of those flat-earth troglodytes that questions global warming assertions and the existence of any native Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the Unites States. As you can imagine I am frequently engaged in arguments and denounced in less than complimentary terms. This situation is symptomatic of the conditions we face daily regarding everything from pet ownership and the introduction of wolves to the expansion and closure of government lands and the deterioration of private property rights and the traditions and economies of rural residents throughout the United States.

When I question global warming assertions, be they imminent worldwide flooding or an approaching Ice Age, it is with a realization that the prediction may come true but the diagnosis is no more proven than mercury (a deadly poison) for syphilis. (This "remedy" was evidently "practiced" among Alaskan prostitutes during the Gold Rush. Many died from "treatment" by madams or by -this is on the level- prostitutes themselves actually breaking thermometers and killing themselves with what they believed was a cure.)

Likewise, there is NO solid affirmation of the existence of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the United States. There is a grainy, 4-second video of a distant non-descript bird and the assertions of several birders, bureaucrats, and University grant recipients that they "glimpsed" what they believed to be an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. I believe that it is either wishful thinking (on the part of the birders) or self-serving chicanery on the part of the government-money recipients (The Nature Conservancy, Cornell, Audubon, etc.) and their bureaucrat "partners".

So what is so different about my being a skeptic about these two things and any other ignorant lout daring to question his betters? The answer is that we are NOT REALLY talking about either global warming or the rediscovery of a giant woodpecker thought extinct for 60 years. On the one hand we are really talking about either acceptance or rejection of the tenet that the earth is warming AND THAT IT IS CAUSED BY HUMAN ACTIVITIES THAT MUST BE SEVERELY LIMITED OR ELIMINATED. On the other hand we are talking about accepting the premise that the Federal government can keep secret appropriations, land acquisition, land easement, grants to "partners' for almost two years to the tune of $10+ Million dollars and that the creation of a land control push involving 5.5 Million acres across the South can also take place in secret based on a highly questionable (I would say fraudulent) assertion with less video and unconfirmed sightings than Susquatch.

It would be one thing if we (all of us) were deciding if climate changes were amenable to certain nations killing all their economic growth and risking recession, depression, or opportunistic invasion: or if solar radiation fluctuations and cyclic earthly phenomena are the real culprits and we should really be preparing for an inevitable future. Similarly, I would like to read about and discuss current efforts to validate the exceedingly remote (again I would say impossible after 60 years) possibility that "a" or "a pair of" Ivory-billed Woodpeckers still inhabit flooded Arkansas river bottoms. (Knowing what I do, were such birds "found" I would immediately suspect a fraudulent origin from Cuba where their demise occurred more recently and where wildlife monitoring and export regulations reflect either money or the lack thereof.)