Tim Smith

This lady says you can't tell her the federal government can't own land. And of course she's right, you can't tell her anything at all. But the federal government does have the authority to own land and we're all better off because they do (discussed at length here). Still, you had better keep an eye on this issue because it's more than just a few crazies in Oregon and Nevada who are pushing this drek. I have friends who do consulting on BLM land and more and more the people who lease it from the Feds are calling it "our land" and asserting property ownership rights such as access. Smaller communities who want to grow their economies are becoming restless and if they have their way, they'll take that land and do with it as they please. For them its a simple issue of personal financial gain and that motive pretty much undermines any form of logic or civic responsibility. The west is a fantastic place to live, pretty much because of these public lands and the opportunities for quality of life they represent for the common man. These people are committed to taking that away, and if the moneyed interests figure out a way to turn this in their favor they'll be on board in no time at all. This is going to get worse before it gets better.

Here's the link to the EPA website describing the new guidelines. http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/guidance/wetlands/CWAwaters_guidesum.cfm The practical outcome will be that if the larger rivers are in good shape, most of the smaller ones must be as well. If there's a problem in the larger drainage, they'll trace it back to the source of the problem and get it cleaned up. Summary of Key Points in the Proposed Guidance Based on the agencies' interpretation of the statute, implementing regulations and relevant caselaw, the following waters are protected by the Clean Water Act: Traditional navigable waters Interstate waters Wetlands adjacent to either traditional navigable waters or interstate waters Non-navigable tributaries to traditional navigable waters that are relatively permanent, meaning they contain water at least seasonally Wetlands that directly abut relatively permanent waters In addition, the following waters are protected by the Clean Water Act if a fact-specific analysis determines they have a "significant nexus" to a traditional navigable water or interstate water: Tributaries to traditional navigable waters or interstate waters Wetlands adjacent to jurisdictional tributaries to traditional navigable waters or interstate waters Waters that fall under the "other waters" category of the regulations. The guidance divides these waters into two categories, those that are physically proximate to other jurisdictional waters and those that are not, and discusses how each category should be evaluated. The following aquatic areas are generally not protected by the Clean Water Act: Wet areas that are not tributaries or open waters and do not meet the agencies' regulatory definition of "wetlands" Waters excluded from coverage under the CWA by existing regulations Waters that lack a "significant nexus" where one is required for a water to be protected by the CWA Artificially irrigated areas that would revert to upland should irrigation cease Artificial lakes or ponds created by excavating and/or diking dry land and used exclusively for such purposes as stock watering, irrigation, settling basins, or rice growing Artificial reflecting pools or swimming pools created by excavating and/or diking dry land Small ornamental waters created by excavating and/or diking dry land for primarily aesthetic reasons Water-filled depressions created incidental to construction activity Groundwater drained through subsurface drainage systems and Erosional features (gullies and rills), and swales and ditches that are not tributaries or wetlands

In some states there are laws to allow access to the banks of large streams (New York for instance), but it's the water, not the riparian zone that is public in most places. Any kind of activity that sends polluted, impaired water downstream directly impacts the public interest and should be regulated when impacts are clear. The "navigable" aspects of this play out in interesting ways. At one point I was looking for records of "small" fish kills on streams in Illinois. It turns out most district biologists only track that data on the very largest "navigable" streams that fall under the narrowest definition of that word. Even though small fish kills are common in Illinois on medium to small streams (the best smallmouth streams in the state fall into that category), only a tiny handful of districts keep that data. They gave 2 reasons 1) because they had no leverage to do anything about it because those weren't "navigable" streams. 2) Impacts from those kills were minimal (although in some cases I don't buy that at all. Most kills are due to low dissolved oxygen and those preferentially remove large fish. Gratuitously wiping out 40-400 of your best breeding stock seems like a pretty sub-optimal situation for a fishery, even if replacements can move in from other places). Up to now, this stuff all just flies under the radar.

https://picasaweb.google.com/106709470466746960123/HookLineLifelist?authkey=Gv1sRgCJCIu5b37sWG8gE&feat=directlink This guy is over 100 species for his life species list. Uses micro-tackle to catch things like darters and minnows (up to sharks and alligator gar). If it swims, you can catch it.

The evidence for global warming is monumental. Most glaciers are retreating, the ice caps are retreating, the lakes are icing out sooner, most the cold adapted plants animals are moving north and further up the mountains and warm adapted species are moving in behind them, and yes...the temperatures are increasing. Global averages are hotter now than they have been since we started taking records. These things are all recorded and are all within a few mouse clicks of your computer. And many of them are looking for extra capacity to deal with reduced snow melt and stream flows, less water, higher temps, more intense storms and all the things that are already starting to happen. Those cycles don't come from thin air. Nature works on cause and effect. Greenhouse gases are one cause among many, and in the short term, they seem to be the ones moving the needle the most. You can say the scientists are just "guessing" but I have articles from 1991 that predict the very things that have come to pass in the last 23 years since that article was written. The predictions for the Midwest where you live are spot on. But if you're willing to say there's no current warming then you're not going to listen to that either.

Hardly over the top. You brought up this guy's work and asked me what I thought about him. I think he's probably a complete charlatan and the web page where that information came from was loaded with similarly ridiculous stories. A web source telling you that you're being poisoned by contrails is not credible. There's not a nice way to say that.

And Mitch, more about your Mr. Watts and the way temperature data is handled. These are the adjusted and unadjusted temperature numbers assembled by NOAA for average temperatures in the USA (where temperature increases have been modest compared to the rest of the world). I find it pretty ironic that Watts is complaining about temperatures being adjusted when he's the one who has agitated more than anyone else that those data need to be revised. NOAA doesn't report raw temperature numbers. In fact almost all the raw numbers they collect are revised DOWNWARD to account for local heat island effects and differences in collection sites. If NOAA did report raw numbers, and if those were valid, the debate about rising temperatures would be over before it began. But NOAA isn't interested in winning a debate. They're trying to collect accurate data that reflects the actual trends on the ground. Seriously, get off websites spewing goofball conspiracy theories and do some inquiry of your own.

Actually the denialist community will go to great pains to point out the consensus number is somewhere closer to 80-95%. Apparently some people find this tremendously important so let's make that adjustment on behalf of your side of the argument (and to be even more clear, the level of acceptance varies among fields, but is highest in the group that spends the most time on this issue). But the bias argument isn't valid. The same number of scientists will be standing there getting the same amount of money to study other topics if that were what was needed. Biologists have plenty to do. Engineers have plenty to do. The fact is those communities have chosen to work on climate change because climate change is an important problem. Let's also point out that by your logic, Jeb, that most of the murder convictions in the US would be immediately overturned. You're demanding two different levels of evidence for 2 very important questions. And again, the concerns about climate change are specifically about their long term effects on the economy. Everyone agrees the economy needs to be protected while dealing with climate change. That's why companies based on the profit motive are investing money to prepare for this. Unless there is a runaway scenario (which seems unlikely to be but could happen), we'll be able to hunker down and muddle through. The problem is the misery that will be associated with that. If current projections are correct, HALF of the GDP of Caribbean nations will be devoted to protecting and recovering from effects of climate change. What a miserable life that would be spending all your time rebuilding from the last storm and trying to avoid getting chewed up in the next one. That's not the future I want to give to my kids.

I haven't heard of any NOAA scientists falsifying temperature data. I can imagine there are plenty of people who would like to accuse them of that. If you could cite your source, that could help sort that out. And by the way, there's a big difference between "falsifying data" (i.e. lying) and methodological problems. Most methodological limitations are known and accounted for. It's pretty rare that something just turns out to be completely unreliable. Edit: Here's the article. Look at the content and the claims all along the margins of this article and ask yourself how credible this is. If you think you're being poisoned by contrails and bigfoot is the Nephilim and you think everything done by anyone in the world is a conspiracy to ruin your life as apparently the authors of this website do, then sure. You should believe what these people are saying. http://www.naturalnews.com/045808_global_warming_fraud_data_manipulation_noaa.html

Why do you assume man has no effect on climate? If we move enough material into the atmosphere, it's perfectly reasonable for us to affect climate. Volcanoes affect climate. Mount Pinatubo dropped temperatures like a rock in 1992. Humans have similar (and in some cases much more) amounts of material into the atmosphere. And why do you assume scientist's results come from political bias? Biased against what? Oil? Coal? You might as well say they're biased against wheat (gluten, you know) and beef (saturated fat!). And how does ignoring greenhouse gasses get you a groundswell of environmental support for anything? And by the way, China has agreed it needs to cap greenhouse emissions. And just about all the utilities and major corporations are preparing for further effects of climate change. Is this because they're far more gullible than us?

Only if you don't understand them. Statistics and methodology wring almost all of the subjectivity out of these things.

The problem is that there are so many overlapping and agreeing approaches to these data that there's almost no chance the broad outlines are wrong. Even the scientific "critics" don't disagree completely with the concepts. They merely disagree on the degrees. Sea level rise could be between 0.25 m and 1.75 m over the next hundred years, but there's no one who actually studies this stuff who believes it's going down.

No one said the sun didn't have an effect. What is said is that during the time the temperatures have gone up during the recent warm up, the variation in the sun's energy wasn't going up with it. So something else has to be responsible for causing that recent increase.

Nope. No way would I try to interpret that data. They're arguing over how to interpret satellite data from two different observation systems and how to splice it together. I have no expertise in that area and couldn't interpret that particular data without more training than I'll ever have time to acquire. Most of the people who DO know how to interpret that data seem to come down on the side no large sun effect. More new information could swing the debate, but it hasn't appeared as yet.

Very probably no. The sun can change climate. Depressed solar activity has been associated with low temperatures on earth. The sun's activity is also generally increasing during this time of increasing activities. But when scientists have tried to match up variation in the sun's output to temperature changes here on earth, they don't correlate. When the sun backs off on solar production these days, things don't get cooler here. In general, sun activity seems to have declined since 1980. However, there is a minority of scientists who think solar activity could be responsible in part for the current rise in temperature. Some of those are at NASA. That group is using different methods to interpret satellite data. I have no access to that data and couldn't venture an opinion about it even if I did. That group, however, does still point to greenhouse gases as a major source of climate change, just as the IPCC agrees that solar activity is important and something that should be better understood. The majority view seems to be that both are important but at the moment, greenhouses gases seem to be the dominant force. There's not any real evidence of a gradual temperature increase on Mars associated with solar activity or anything else. The best predictor of temperature on Mars seems to come from the size of dust storms there. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7136/abs/nature05718.html