Global Warming: Not happening. The earth is always going through warming and cooling cycles, but they generally require several hundreds of years to emerge and to change. The most recent cooling cycle was the "Little Ice Age" during the 1400's for a 450 year period. Since then, the earth has warmed about one degree Fahrenheit in the past century, but that warming ended in the 1940's, fully 50 years ago. For the past 20 years, meteorological satellites and radiosonde balloons all have produced data suggesting little change, but possibly a very slight cooling.

El Nino and La Nina: Natural warming and cooling cycles of the Pacific Ocean. They have widespread impact on global temperatures and events. In a similar fashion, the several hundred active volcanoes effect the world's weather by putting tons of dust and other chemicals into the atmosphere. By comparison, human activities have virtually no real impact.

U.S. Forests: The U.S. still has 70% of the forests that existed in 1600 when the Pilgrims first arrived. Fully 737 million areas of the U.S. land mass are forest acres. Timberlands now contain 28% more standing timber volume than in 1952. Fully 247 million acres are reserved from harvest by law or represent slow-growing woodlands unsuitable for timber production. Wood is a renewable natural resource and is completely recyclable.

Who Owns Most of the U.S.? The Government! The Federal government owns 456 million acres of forests, grazing lands, the minerals in and under those acres, as well as the wildlife and recreational amenities they represent.

Environmental Laws: Currently, one third of all federal laws are devoted to the protection of the environment. In 1997, the Environmental Protection Agency set new records by assessing $264.4 million in fines from 704 civil and criminal cases referred to the Justice Department. In addition, U.S. federal law identifies as criminal fully 10,000 activities, based on 3,000 federal criminal laws.