Bob, here's a link to follow up your Martian warming post. Seems there's more substance to the story than I thought.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/mars011207.html

Question is, is there a link between Mars' global warming and ours? If what's causing Mars' warming is causing ours, it seems cutting back CO2 emissions might not do much good in that regard (though laying off the fossil fuels might be a good idea for other reasons). Some would say solar activity could play a role, but many say it's not enough to account for the warming. What's going on? I am cautious by nature and usually take a "better safe than sorry attitude". But if I find someone has been playing Chicken Little in order to use my tendencies to manipulate me, I will not be very pleased. Manipulating people by playing on their fears is not very nice....

-- Nexar (Arax7@mvn.net), December 30, 2001

Answers

Nexar,

Thanks for the heads up on this article, I would have missed it otherwise. Glad to see that someone else seems to think that it is valid science, not the usual hype we get from the network news.

This is a very interesting phenomonen that bears further study. I hope that it is something that will remain in the news so we can find out what the cause is.

I have to agree with you on the chicken little theory. I know that environmental issues are usually wrapped in theory and decorated with emotion. This makes for an instant rejection on my part.They seem to be for the most part based on fear tactics. I have been hearing about environmentalism for years, and really none to very, very, little of it has been proven scientifically, all theories. Global warming models are just that, models. Have you ever watched the weather on tv and look at their computer generated weather models? What is the accuracy rate of them, and they are only dealing with very short term situations. How many variables would be in long term climate studies as opposed to short term weather? It seems ludicrous to place all our eggs in the basket of computer models, when according to the new changes on Mars, it is indeed NOT the SUV's that are causing the problem.

Talk to you later.

-- Bob in WI (bjwick@hotmail.com), December 31, 2001.

I once heard from somewhere that there are three version of the truth.

One's own truth, the other's truth, and THE truth.

Likewise, I believe the actual truth about what's going on in the environment lies somewhere between the environmentalist version and the industrialists version.

One must remain aware that both the Left and the Right will try to put a spin on an issue in order to suit their agendas. Unlike you, I don't reject EVERYTHING the environmentalists say, because sometimes what they say does have a kernel of truth, albeit exaggerated. I know this for a fact because sometimes I witness the problems firsthand.

As a resident in Illnois, I can tell you that the problem of stream pollution by pesticides and soil runoff is a very real one. I have seen the condition of the area streams deteriorate over the past 20 years. Though I cannot say for certain what kind of impact the pesticides are having, the fact that the streams and rivers are filling up and getting choked with silt is very plain to see.

And I know that the environmental people here in Illnois have made some really bone-headed decisions, such as the decision to reintroduce coyotes in my area. The result is now that the populations of small game like rabbit and quail are disappearing. The coyotes are multiplying faster than the bunnies and are in fact driving the bunnies out! It's almost bad enough to where we have to beat off the varmints with a stick!

BTW, according to what I've read in other posts in this forum, I live practically in shouting distance of Ol' Hoot. To my recollection, he's in Olney, IL, correct? I reside near Salem, IL. About 40 miles west.

-- Nexar (Arax7@mvn.net), January 01, 2002.

Yes Nexar, your correct on the Olney location.

I grew up in what would now be considered the far south Chicago suburbs on the Indiana side. So I can't say much about the water problems you refer to above.

I CAN say that over the last 40 years or so, the OVERALL quality of the air and water has gotten dramatically better. Ask anybody old enough to remember the (I'm gonna misspell this 4 sure) Cuyahoga river in Ohio burning for about 9 months. Was around 1970 or so. The Little Calumet river and the Cal/Sag canal both burnt a time or 2 around that same time. Lake Erie was dead. (Let's here it for the Zebra mussels. Real good news/bad news thing there.)

Used to be when the wind would change and come out of the north, you'd get this nasty smell from the refineries and mills in Whiting, Gary and East Chicago that would darn near choke you. You could look up north and see the smog any day. I think Lake county was rated the 8th most polluted county in the country at one time.

I traveled a bunch back then to a lot of metro areas and it was basically the same everywhere. My point is, Things could be better. But overall, things are a whole lot better than what they were. I have a tendency to be like Bob and dismiss a lot of the propaganda from the mainstream press, having actually seen the improvement in things.

No, I don't think we need to rollback any of the things that have worked to make it better.(In case anyone wondered) But, we probably could use a little more objectivity in what is reported and not so much hysteria and "chicken little" as you say.

-- JOhn in S IN (jdoofus@hotmail.com), January 01, 2002.

You hit it, Nexar. There is propaganda or spin on both sides, and the truth is present a "bit" in both.

I remember when I was really young and we had to go through Gary, Indiana to visit my grandparents that we would try holding our breath as long as possible to avoid breathing the stench. It amazed me that people actually lived there-ugh.

Perhaps the best way to look at any news from either side is to recall that the "right" wants $$$$$ and the "left" wants control. I am all for protecting the environment through private ownership and truly believe that if corporations didn't exist there would be a lot less trouble with the environment as people do what is right with their own property the majority of the time.

In extremem situations pesticides are necessary, b ut surely not to the extentt they are currently used. Now, I don't know if the dead area of the Gulf is true or not, but I see the Ag column here and every week there is an advisement to dump another poison on something. It's a bit disheartening.

John, it's funny- my brother who is 45 and I had a conversation regarding the environment and he brought up exactly he same points as you!

-- Doreen (bisquit@here.com), January 02, 2002.

Nexar

You need to read more closely. The words usually and most do not mean all. Of course some of the things environmentalists say are accurate, but you have to dig through a lot of bull to find them. Just yesterday I saw on tv a Greenpeace fund raiser. They had the usual babe on there, almost crying with a shaky voice.(She should get the academy award for her performance). She was telling us that without Greenpeace the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. Send money, send money.

You mention water pollution from pesticides and runoff. Where I used to live a neighbor single-handedly destroyed a trout stream by allowing runoff form his dairy operation to go directly into the stream. Several people reported this to the DNR, Soil Conservation Service and several other regulatory agencies. They did absolutely NOTHING. If we want clean water we need someone who will respond to problems and doesn't just pass the buck as these organizations did. The EPA said they did not deal with small naturally occuring events. I just wonder how can a giant manure pit, that overflows directly into a stream, be called a naturally occuring event. It was their way of staying out of the situation. They didn't want to disturb a "family farm". That is really sad, to say the least. I think they figured it was not worth their time since they could not levy fines in the millions on a family farm without losing face in the media. After all it was not a giant evil corporation, who everybody knows is guilty of something, we just have to find it. Got to agree with you on the dumb things our government in the name of environmental improvement does. The introduction of wolves and coyotes to WI is really dumb.(Don't they remember killer bees, asian ladybugs, rabbit in Australia, and hundreds more.?) Wisconsin relies on tourism and hunting for a large part of the states revenues. With the wolves and coyotes in the state, hunting will not improve. I guess it is ok with some of the environmentalists to let a pack of wolves attack a deer and eat it alive, but it is cruel to allow people to harvest the abundant deer in our state. There is a major lack of logic there.

John,

Couldn't agree with you more that the environment is improving every day. The media needs to be objective, if they know what the word means anymore, in their reporting of the environmental issues. An occasional word about something getting better would bolster the environmental cause to a large degree. People are sick of everything on the network news being negative. At least I know that I am.

Doreen,

Got to agree with you on the pesticides. They should be limited. I wonder if the pesticides will eventually do the same thing to pests that antibiotics have done to bacteria. Will the pests become immune to them so they no longer work? What will we do then? Starve???

Some people have made spin a four letter word by their extreme presentation of the "facts". I think spin used to be presenting your case in the best possible light. Now it has become outright lies in some cases. (We all know who I am talking about.) Both sides do spin things. I guess that it is human nature to try to get people to believe what you are saying, rather than the what the other guy is saying.

I think private ownership of land is a good way of protecting the environment. I am a member of the Nature Conservancy myself and that is just what it does.I think the Nature Conservancy will always do better at administering lands than any part of the government ever could. It is their money and they want to use it wisely, unlike many government agencies.

It sounds like a good idea to have a world without corporations, but a Luddite philosophy will not change where we are now. In fact without many large corporations we would not be able to have this conversation the way we can do it today. They are not all evil.

In most cases I agree that private ownership of property is going to result in better care of the land than corporate farms. Most folks are pretty good stewards of the land, at least the homesteader types that I have met over the years have been.

Talk to you later.

-- Bob in WI (bjwick@hotmail.com), January 02, 2002.

My anti-corporate stance boils down to one thing: The breakup of concentrations of Power. In this case, Economic Power. My fear is as the mega-mergers continue, Economic Power will become concentrated and centralized to the point where we are not longer in control of our economic destinies. And since Politcal and Military Power are tied Economic Power, it can be said that he who has all the gold makes the rules.

I see what you mean now by privatization. It's not about putting in the hands of big, impersonal multinationals, but putting it into the hands of people like us. I am much more in favor of such a course. Of course, in order for such to work, a lot of communication and dialogue is going to be needed. Tackling complex issues is going to require a lot cooperation and good, open lines of communication.

It's all about balance of power and the ability to participate meaningfully in the decision-making process. I just don't like the idea of all the power being held in the hands of those that can't be held accountable for their actions and whose motives and priorites might be questionable.

-- Nexar (Arax7@mvn.net), January 02, 2002.

"He who has all the gold makes all the rules" Interesting comment, and very true. It has been that way since day one and will probably always be that way. If you are rich you can do whatever you want, just look at OJ. Look at most of our recent presidents, 1 especially. Power has been and will continue to be associated with money in most cases. Nowdays you can't run for any major political office in this country unless you are a millionaire. It obviously should not be this way.

Economic power works much the same way. The large companies, in most cases, can control the markets and manipulate prices if they choose. I like to believe that they all do not do this, and I am sure that this is the case. I am optimistic that a some people in this country still have a few moral values, despite what the ACLU, supreme court, and others are doing to try to destroy them.

I agree that privitization on a lower level will require a lot of work. But with anything of value it is worth the effort to accomplish the goal. We need to keep working on this. It is imperative that we do. We need to spread the power to everybody, not just a few.

You don't like the idea of power being in the hands of those who can't be held accountable. I agree there also. I look at the last administration and see unaccountability in many of the people who were in it, from the top down.(We all can mention a few that we remember.) No one was accountable for anything. They all just passed the buck or convieniently forgot what happened.

Accountability will soon be brought to light in the Enron fiasco. Apparently four individuals have sacked the company and screwed the stockholders and the raped the employees. I for one will be very interested in how this turns out, and if those responsible will be punished for their actions. If they do not get punished it will send a signal to the whole world that this form of behavior is acceptable in the US, and should be embraced. After years of no one getting punished in political high places we need to change our stance as a nation on holding people responsible for their actions, no excuses, just jail, and complete restitution, even if it means bankruptcy. These individuals do not deserve sympathy from ANYONE.

Talk to you later.

-- Bob in WI (bjwick@hotmail.com), January 03, 2002.

Well, this is a very interesting discussion, which of course, I cannot resiste getting into!

I'm a tree hugger, according to some folks, and it's true that I tend towards environmental protectionsm.

I also agree that there's a bunch of bull from both sides; in fact, I had to cancel my membership in the Sierra Club, maybe thirty years ago, because, as I wrote the "leaders", I could not support lying to protect redwood forests. I'm into protecting forests, but through honest means. We didn't NEED lies to show what was going on there!

I think in many ways, the environment IS getting cleaner. I can cite lots of instances similar to those which y'all mentioned. I used to live in the Humboldt Bay area, in Northern California.

When I first lived there, in 1968-1969, there were two pulp mills out on the Samoa Spit, which made the air in Eureka so toxic that I would do practically anything to avoid driving to this city, which was eight miles from where I lived in Arcata.

I returned to the area in 1973 only to find that the two mills, while they still belched smoke and steam into the air, had somehow cleaned up their act, and the worst days in Eureka were at that point like the best days back in '68. Wow; good job!

I suggest that this MUST have come about through government regulation, probably the California Air Board.

Now, the down side. There are still lots of stinky, foul polluters doing what the two pulp mills were forced to clean up. An example: I drive up the I-5 every month or so, and still try to hold my breath as long as possible when I reach Albany, as their pulp mill still pollutes as strongly and stinkily as it ever did. Yech!

I can also state that the high level skies are so polluted, whether by so much airline traffic, as I suspect, or something else, I can't say. But thirty-five years ago, when I first started travelling by air, you didn't see brown smoggy air at the same altitude as the planes fly over the entire country, and now it is there almost every time I fly, if not every time.

Yes, we're making good progress at controlling the pollution put out by many sources, but as the population grows, there are more and more pollution sources. I don't think we'll ever be able to keep up with the population, although if our "leaders" (and the Demorats are as guilty as the Republiconmen) would make a significant effort to go solar, at the expense of the profits of their corporate brothren, we could eliminate better than 90% of CO2 emissions, at least.

"Where I use"d to live a neighbor single-handedly destroyed a trout stream by allowing runoff form his dairy operation to go directly into the stream. Several people reported this to the DNR, Soil Conservation Service and several other regulatory agencies. They did absolutely NOTHING." I've seen similar examples of private citizens' selfishness, and that's why I regretably feel the need to have government regulation. I agree that government does a pretty poor job overall, but no regulation at all would be much worse. Tough problem, imho.

Bob, I've done quite a bit of consultant work for the Nature Conservancy, over the last fifteen years. I agree that their method of preserving the environment has a lot of merit, but we can't count on their buying up too much land, or we'll all be slaves of the Conservancy, won't we? I'm not knocking what they do, just saying it's only one part of a difficult puzzle.

I'm personally putting a piece of virgin growth forest I own , with 2000 feet of a Class I stream,into a conservancy trust, once I figure out which organization will be around after I die.

Nexar, well said, as usual. I agree with you about accountability of corporations. I wish I felt that government were more accountable. At least government is somewhat accountable, especially at local levels.

Bob, I totally agree with you about everything you said about Enron. What a scam! Does this not sound rather parallel to the Savings and Loan scam? I'm not really up to speed on that one, but the way I understood it, our President Select's brother was involved in that one, just as Dubya was apparently involved in this one. Time will tell, I guess. I also hope someone's "heads roll" figuratively at least.

-- joj (jump@off.c), January 04, 2002.

Hmmmm....I do not really have much left to say. Seems all of you have presented your points beautifully. As for the environmental news in my area, it's not all bad here either. Over the past 10 years, I've seen animals return to my area, some of which I never thought existed in my neck of the woods. Of course, the threat is far from gone. The big threat now is of habitat being cleared for constructing new homes, most of them belonging to aging baby-boomers fleeing the cities.

Yes, it's quite a tangled mess to solve. Whether its private ownership or government bureacracy, it always comes back to the problem of "Quis custodies ipsos custodes". Unless this problem is addressed, going either route is a moot issue. In the end, it seems to only solution is to have a populace that is active, engaged, and EDUCATED when it comes to the issues. To put it another way, the only way I see around the dilemma is for everyone to become their Brother's Keeper, regardless of whether they WANT the responsibility or not. It seemed the Founding Fathers understood this, but has been forgotten by most of us over time.

Well, there's not much more to be said. It's time to roll up my sleeves and hop to it! It's been an enjoyable conversation.

-- Nexar (Arax7@mvn.net), January 04, 2002.