"Tinkerntom" wrote in message
...
I absolutely cannot believe that THIS got fanned in this newsgroup, of
ALL
places!!

Kindly explain what you meant by 'there was nothing before'..??

--riverman

Hi there riverman, and all,

Obviously there was something there before, but not a reservoir! I am
in Colorado, where there is lots of WW, which is fine if you are into
WW. But even the WW would and still does disappear, as the rivers run
low at the end of the season. In the early season, floods were common.
So the Corp of Eng. built reservoirs for flood control, and Denver
Water Board, built water diversion projects. Farmers built Highline
canal, to bring in irrigation water. Now WW paddlers build play parks,
we boat and fish on the reservoirs, and dayhikers walk along the canal
and enjoy the great outdoors.

Is it a virgin wildplace experience? NO! Is it enjoyable and
refreshing? Yes!!

I believe that many of us paddlers would say we were born a hundred
years too late! or maybe even more. You are right on wanting to enjoy
the wild places. And that there are fewer and fewer. The problem I
feel is when you attribute their loss to GW, and that is where you got
cross wise with a bunch of us. Like a smoldering campfire the hot
coals where already there. All you had to do was add a little fuel,
and fan a little, or as the case may be, blow a lot of hot air! Don't
be surprised if the fire builds up all of a sudden, and scorches your
whiskers.

To those who would question my reference to PBS tv programs, I did not
cite them as factual documentation of what is going on in our
environment. But as examples of the lack of agreement even among
enviro types, of what is going on, how long it has been going on, the
source of the problem, and the net result. Maybe the atmosphere is
warming, and the ice is melting, and we may wake up some day to a
different world, but we will wake up, and adapt. Unless we choose to
not adapt, and choose instead to live in our blue bubble of
unrealistic liberalism.

In the meantime, keep on paddling, ur... maybe I should say go skiing,
on all that manmade early season snow.


Tinkerntom: I'm not sure where to start. You have a few valid points you
bring up, but there is a lot of hyperbole and jingoism in your post as well,
which makes it hard to discuss _real_ issues.

Some of your valid points about rivers drying up and runoff causing floods
are well taken, but you counter that with the standard Bureau of Reclamation
line about flood control, recreational areas and irrigation. The benefits
and shortcomings of dam projects has been well-discussed for about 20 years,
with the end result being a complete reversal of position by the BuRec to
where they have disbanded their dam building department. The environmental,
social and ecological impacts are turning out to be much more complex than
the simple 'rivers cause floods' model, and as a result, opposing parties
have long ago agreed to work much more closely to evaluate the benefits and
deficits of dams. Reading your post makes me think that I am discussing this
with someone who has the level of understanding of this that went away in
the 70s.

That point of view is reinforced with your statement about "we may wake up
some day to a different world, but we will wake up, and adapt." It sounds
that your nihlist point of view is to go ahead and do whatever we want, to
hell with any foresight of consequences, and we'll just adapt to the
results. Hmm, maybe YOU can live with that strategy, but I'm pretty sure
that I can't. Personally, I want to be proactive. I want to have forsight,
and to protect any dwindling resources...which includes uncontrolled rivers,
uncut forests, and closed wilderness areas. I prefer diversity, abhor
monoculture, and I know that there is much to be learned from natural
systems that we don't yet understand, or even know about. Species are driven
to extiction before we even catalogue or study them, often (or 'mostly')
because of unguided and careless industrial practices. I believe in
oversight by intelligent, protective organizations who share my values. I
don't want to 'adapt' to a steadily deteriorating environment and steadily
developing monoculture.

And I have no idea what you mean by you last statement: "unless we choose
to not adapt, and choose instead to live in our blue bubble of unrealistic
liberalism." The term 'liberal' has been tossed around so much that it has
lost almost all meaning. In your statement, I see that you have chosen
'sides' so thoroughly that you are saying things that don't even mean
anything any more.Are you saying that people who resist mindless expansion,
unsupervised development and have a forward-looking attitude of conservation
are 'liberals', and as such, are unable to adapt? That adapting to
deteriorating situations is preferable to having some sort of guiding
principles of protectionism? That good things are not worth keeping, and
people who want to keep good things are 'liberals' and as such, bad? It is
pretty difficult to have an intelligent, open minded discussion with someone
when they are so tangled with hyperbole and rhetoric that they don't even
make sense.

Yes, scientists disagree. That's the essence of science. They disagree, then
that spurs them on to discover more and more about what they are disagreeing
about to clarify their Understanding. That is much different than saying
'because they disagree, then they have no validity.' Its the quality and
intelligence of the discussion, the evidence that is produced during those
disagreements that is the hallmark of scientific discourse. Being threatened
by the fact that intelligent and inquisitive people are investigating
something and arguing openly about their findings is another indication that
you seem to be coming from a referential framework that is very well
outdated....like from the Dark Ages or something. A society without
disagreement sounds far too dictatorial to me. I cherish the disagreement,
you should too. As long as it is mindful, based in fact and research, and
with testable hyptotheses.

Yeah, things happened during Clinton's tenure. Also during Bush, Sr.s,
Reagans, Carter, etc. But the hallmark of THIS Presidency is that there is
less an attitude of preserving biodiversity and wilderness, and more of an
attitude of opening up wilderness areas for development under the guide of
'Wise Use', to allow development of lands and resources put aside with
preservation in mind by relaxing prohibitions. To allow degradion of air and
water resources in favor of immediate profit, to encourage practices that
might well be accelerating global issues like Global Warming. And when you
take a pristine, or seldom-used undeveloped area and put in oil rigs, roads,
logging trucks and relax accountability for 'management' practices, you are
taking that resource through a doorway that only goes one way. You can't get
your virginity back, you can't get your reputation back, and when you
develop pristine areas, you can't get that pristineness back.

Being able to adapt to that kind of change is not a sign of sucess. You want
scorched whiskers? Just keep on ignoring environmental impacts.

--riverman

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