Disgraced Democrat former senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards, before he disgraced himself, was fond of saying that there were two Americas. There are also two worlds, or at least two. There are actually many worlds, most of them invented by liberals who are long on fantasies and feelings but short on facts. But let’s just consider two of all the possible worlds. One world is the Real World, where facts support claims and the world is subject to the laws of physics, biology, geology, etc. The other world is Carol’s World.

Carol’s World exists in the mind of Carol Forster, a retired mental health counselor who helps to run a small-town newspaper. Carol’s World is subject to the laws of junk science and green idealism. In Carol’s World, it is perfectly acceptable, if not mandatory, to attack dynamic, conservative young leaders such as Governors Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin, even if Carol can’t quite get her facts straight to use as weapons against them. In Carol’s World, Carol can write all the nonsense her little heart desires, and she can have it published on websites like DigitalJournal.com without worrying about such pesky matters as accuracy.

In Carol’s World:

Climate change and the inevitable extinction of the human species have been emphatically underlined by scientists studying coral reefs. But some leaders don’t listen, even though the loss of these reefs, already at 20%, constitutes a serious blow to the balance in the ecosystem that is the key to maintaining survival of the earth and the global warming that is leading to man’s extinction. Nevertheless, Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana, and Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, two key figures repeatedly touted as two of the leaders of the Republican Party and contenders for the Presidency in 2012, continue to back oil and gas exploration and activities counter to maintaining the balance of nature necessary to the survival of the planet.

In the Real World, it is one-third of the more than 700 species of reef-building corals that are threatened with extinction, not the entire human species. The primary causes of coral reef extinction are not, as in Carol’s world, oil and gas extraction. According to NOAA coral reef expert William Platt:

Overfishing — especially the kind that uses dynamite or poison to kill whole schools of fish — destroys the coral directly, while polluted runoff from agriculture simply chokes them.

In the Real World, marine life thrives around the legs of the oil drilling platforms in the warm watersoff the coast of Bobby Jindal’s Louisisana as well as incolder waters not much unlike those off Sarah Palin’s Alaska.

In Carol’s World, Gov. Sarah Palin:

…has ignored science and continued promoting fuel sources that can cause environmental damage. Palin, as reported by Alaska newspapers and environmentalists, is on the environmental community’s hit list because of her lack of support on environmental issues that include her risk of endangered species, like polar bears, her push for drilling in the ANWAR, a protected refuge whose array of life forms has been found essential to earth’s maintaining balance, and her support of coal mine productions that also reap serious consequences.

In the Real World, there are two things that are correct in that statement by Carol. The rest is moose manure. Palin is indeed on the environmental community’s hit list, and Alaska’s liberal newspapers and wild-eyed environmentalists are without a doubt anti-Palin. In the Real World, Alaska’s newspapers are part of the same drive-by media that most Americans recognize as being biased against Palin. In the Real World, the media hates Sarah Palin.

Also in the Real World, Alaska’s polar bears have little to fear from her. Thanks to international agreements to protect the animals from hunting, polar bears are are currently at population levels that have doubled since the 1960s. Studies show their numbers may actually be at historic high levels. Biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor says that Alaska’s polar bear population is stable.

In the Real World, ANWR is roughly the size of the entire state of South Carolina. The portion of it that Gov. Palin and others of reason want to allocate for drilling is roughly the size of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The analogy a postage stamp on a football field is an appropriate one. Also, the portion of ANWR designated for drilling is not the place of scenic beauty depicted in the environmental lobby’s anti-drilling propaganda which fuels Carol’s World, but a flat, desolate place with little wildlife save for mosquitoes. The more picturesque parts of ANWR will remain untouched if drilling is allowed.

In the Real World, Alaska is blessed with an abundance of coal. More than half of the nation’s coal reserves are located there, and it is mostly the low-sulfur type of the resource, the kind that causes the least amount of air pollution when it is burned. There is enough of the black stuff buried under the ground to last Alaska for more than 15,000 years if none of it were exported. But there are only two coal mines operating in the state, and they must meet stringent reclamation requirements. Alaska is 46th in the nation in coal power generation, with only 18 operating coal-fired power stations.

In Carol’s World, Sarah Palin supports “plastic over natural evergreens for Christmas as reported by the Huffington Post.”

In the Real World, if you follow Carol’s link to HuffPo, hardly a source of reliable information, there’s a link to a video narrated by a youngster whose valley-girl speak is barely intelligible (and the libs mock Sarah for her accent?). Anyway, watching the video, which is a three and a half minute Excederin headache, reveals that the plastic trees poor Carol refers to are not plastic Christmas trees, but actually an environmental scrubbing device intended to  reduce CO2 levels by trapping and filtering it out of the atmosphere. These plastic “trees” are experimental, but are 1,000 times more efficient than a natural tree in trapping carbon dioxide. For the record, Sarah Palin has never advocated using plastic Christmas trees instead of the kind that grow in the ground, and the tree in the Alaska governor’s mansion this Christmas is of the natural variety.

In the Real World, people do research, follow links and determine whether allegations are supported by actual facts. In Carol’s World, HuffPo is an unimpeachable source, things are taken at face value, conclusions are jumped to, and things are just made up.

– JP