Tim Smith

Not really. For coddling a pedophile and allowing him make the Penn State football locker room his...well that's just too gross to type...Penn State will have a slightly less impressive football legacy and pay a small percentage of their athletic budget in fines. This guy, we don't know yet. The state of Colorado has made it clear they want him dead. There are also hints he's a brain come unhinged. It's probably inevitable that he will plead insanity. If that works, he'll be locked down for the rest of his life. Aside from Sandusky, no one at Penn State is looking at jail time. So you're saying this guy shot up a theater because he got an NIH grant? Dogs, yes. People? Slightly different category. I don't want to play the hypocrite here. I have been in a position where I've had to weigh my response to violence and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be a very good Mennonite. But there does come a point when brains just don't work. I grew up with a mentally handicapped sibling. In that context you learn pretty quickly what physiology does to reason and order. If you're looking for moral equivalence, there's a big difference between executing someone who's hearing voices because their body has malfunctioned, and someone who has their faculties intact.

Bobcat.

You're suggesting he should be in a cell with Sandusky??

Caught this one a couple of weeks ago on the Yampa. Can't go there now because it's under a voluntary closure due to the drought. Maybe I can find some gar instead.

The problem is that the solution needs to be sustainable. Government subsidies work best when they create the infrastructure for markets to fill. Unless you want the government to feed these to the troops...which might not be a bad idea...it's the markets around the fish that will keep pulling fish out of the river. Don't we agree you shouldn't do with taxes what the free market can do on it's own? About three years ago I spoke to the Ziegler feed company about this. Fish meal plants already exist. You can add more fishers but if there's no market to buy their fish they're going nowhere. There has been a consistent effort from many quarters to get these fish entrained into the free market. A few years ago on the fishing forums, if you talked about eating them then and how they were actually good food, the skepticism was a mile deep. Now, various chefs have been promoting them. Stephen Colbert even had a piece on marketing these fish. Illinois prisoners have been processing Asian carp for a while now. The tournament exists over and beyond those efforts. Probably the best thing you can do for the river is to enter the tourny and buy the fish when you see them on the market.

That's pretty funny that we're on opposite side of the fence here, Jerry, although I think you are probably right about the Cal-Sag electrical fence. It was a long shot for that thing to work and we're still years from sealing the Great Lakes off from the Mississipi drainage to a level the fence could have mattered. If a private tournament and animal feed companies and commercial anglers can make a dent in these guys, there's no need for the government to be involved at all outside the normal regulations. No need to worry about crashing the fishery...no one wants it anyway. Once corn prices blow through the roof in the months to come, these Asian carp are going to get a second look as a feed source. They were already marginally profitable, it's just that other fish meal sources were available.

One reason to do this in the form of a tournament is that if someone is making cash off the deal, they're more likely to show up later and do it again next year...or a few weeks later. Putting market forces to work for mother nature. Win, win.

But that doesn't reduce CO2. ...and that doesn't reduce CO2. The EPA everyone wants dismantle and half the house and senate are trying to defund because they want to enforce CO2 regulations? We may end up with more of these before it's all over, but in some places, the loss of snow pack is going to make the hydro option much weaker. Also, I think as a cost of building any further nuclear plants, we should lock up the engineers who insisted for decades that the Fukishima style reactors were completely safe and there was no possible way they could ever melt down. This one baffles me. Half the country is insisting the reason the Chinese got ahead was because of the tax burden on production here in the US. Just before the wind tax break was winding down, just about every flatbed in Colorado that could carry wind turbine blades and towers was loaded to the max. Apparently SOME ONE thought that tax break was helping. Your yard? You'll need more than that. I'll spot you 24,000 and let's race.

Details about the shooter: he had an NIH grant (highly competitive...he would have had to be very bright to pull that off). He had just taken his qualifying exams for his Ph.D. and may or may not have passed (suspecting he didn't pass...unless this guy spoke to absolutely NO ONE, this will eventually be known). He was advertising himself as aspiring scientist and looking for a job as a "lab technician"??? If you're a Ph.D. with NIH funding and the kind of resume this guy had, you don't work as a lab technician. You run the lab. He was also studying mental illnesses...a recent trend. Failing your qualifying exams is a very big deal....big enough to push a person with marginal mental health over the edge. Add that to schizophrenia or some other deeper issue and pull the switch and off he goes.

From KFVS and the AFS newsfeed: Saint Andrew School, SIU Fisheries Society and BASI to host Carp-a-thon 2012Carp-A-Thon coming in August. (Source: Mike Miles) CARBONDALE, IL (KFVS) - Saint Andrew School, the SIU Chapter of the American Fisheries Society, and the Bowfishing Association of Southern Illinois will be hosting an inaugural Carp-A-Thon August 10-11. Only Big Head and Silver Carp (Asian Carp) will be weighed. The society says their goal for this event is to raise an awareness of infiltration of the Silver and Bighead Carp into our local waterways; promote recreational use of the Big Muddy and Mississippi and the sporting opportunities created by the accidental introduction of these exotic species; and raise funds for Saint Andrew School in Murphysboro, the SIU Chapter of the American Fisheries Society, and the Bowfishing Society of Southern Illinois. Suggested donations will be $10 for adults, $5 for children 15 and under. There will be prizes for Top Ten Heaviest Fish, and four categories of Biggest Fish: Biggest Overall; Biggest Fish caught by device (arrow, spear, line or net), Biggest Fish to jump in boat or land, Biggest Fish caught in the air with a net. Participants will be on the honor system. The prizes may be nominal and determined by the total donations received. All state and federal laws and regulations must be followed. Pursuant to state and federal laws, they say it is critical that no one transports any live silver or bighead carp. Sign in will be at the Saint Andrew School Festival 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Friday, August 10. The event will be limited to 200 entrants. Weigh-in will start Saturday, August 11 at 2 p.m. on the grounds of the Saint Andrew School Festival. Leady's Feed Store in Murphsyboro will convert the carcasses to livestock feed. Participants may fish any river, creek, ditch or stream within the Big Muddy waterway below the Rend Lake Dam, or the Mississippi waterway from the mouth of the Kaskaskia to Cairo. Additionally, Silver and Bighead Carp may have likely moved into impoundments near the waterways, such as Lyerla Lake, Horseshoe Lake, Grand Tower Chute, and Turkey Bayou, which will be open to fishing as well. Only legal methods may be used to harvest fish. Legal methods include but are not limited to: * Bow * Spear * Gig * Pole and line * Catching the fish in the air with a net * Cast net To receive the official Rules or discuss sponsoring a prize, please contact Mike Miles at miles42@msn.com, John Bowzer (AFS member, '08) at bowzer.john@siu.edu or Eric Giles, at e.giles@mchsi.com.

Right. We are far, far and away the largest producers of greenhouse gases and the largest per capita producers of greenhouse gases.

This guy was the age when shizophrenia tends to kick in. I betting that surfaces here too. The guidelines for concealed carry in Colorado are here. It would have been legal to have a firearm on the premises. Where can I NOT carry with a valid Colorado concealed carry permit? 18-12-214. Authority granted by permit - carrying restrictions. (1) (a) A permit to carry a concealed handgun authorizes the permittee to carry a concealed handgun in all areas of the state, except (2) A permit issued does not authorize a person to carry a concealed handgun into a place where the carrying of firearms is prohibited by federal law. (3) A permit issued pursuant to this part 2 does not authorize a person to carry a concealed handgun onto the real property, or into any improvements erected thereon, of a public elementary, middle, junior high, or high school (4) A permit issued does not authorize a person to carry a concealed handgun into a public building at which: (a) Security personnel and electronic weapons screening devices are permanently in place at each entrance to the building; ( Security personnel electronically screen each person who enters the building to determine whether the person is carrying a weapon of any kind; and © Security personnel require each person who is carrying a weapon of any kind to leave the weapon in possession of security personnel while the person is in the building. (5) Nothing in this shall be construed to limit existing rights of a private property owner, private tenant, private employer, or private business entity. Can I carry a concealed handgun, with my permit, into a city or county building? Yes, as long as they do not have the security procedures in place as outlined in 18-12-214(4), as detailed above. 18-12-214. Authority granted by permit - carrying restrictions. (1) (a) A permit to carry a concealed handgun authorizes the permittee to carry a concealed handgun in all areas of the state, except (2) A permit issued does not authorize a person to carry a concealed handgun into a place where the carrying of firearms is <a href="http://www.rmgo.org/concealed-carry-guide" target="_blank">prohibited by federal law. (3) A permit issued pursuant to this part 2 does not authorize a person to carry a concealed handgun onto the real property, or into any improvements erected thereon, of a public elementary, middle, junior high, or high school (4) A permit issued does not authorize a person to carry a concealed handgun into a public building at which: (a) Security personnel and electronic weapons screening devices are permanently in place at each entrance to the building; ( Security personnel electronically screen each person who enters the building to determine whether the person is carrying a weapon of any kind; and © Security personnel require each person who is carrying a weapon of any kind to leave the weapon in possession of security personnel while the person is in the building. (5) Nothing in this shall be construed to limit existing rights of a private property owner, private tenant, private employer, or private business entity. Cinemark generally prohibits firearms and has asked patrons engaged in open carry to leave the premises....although I can find no similar cases for concealed carry so far. I'll lay you dollars to donuts there are plenty of Cinemark patrons carrying...but not in a suburban theatre packed with young people, many of whom were not the required age of 21. It would have been hard to get through the Kevlar even if someone was carrying.

We haven't changed the solar cycles or the lunar cycles or any other cycles that are out of our control. I don't think anyone said we did. We've just added extra carbon on top of those. No, carbon credits (certainly not voluntary ones like we have now) won't solve the problem. I've encouraged people to buy them, but mostly as a way to keep mangrove from getting dredged under. The market has to stand behind the solution (even if so far it looks like they're not going to come up with one). Lower taxes on the energy sources that get us away from carbon, ones that keep carbon in the ground. Lower taxes on efficient consumers. Cars, households, businesses... Continue and accelerate research and development. Favor partner countries who work to lower their footprint. Get ready for more droughts and more storms and more heat and more erratic weather. Face up to the problem, call a spade a spade and make decisions based on sound science.

Well he's not a normal predator. Predators get some benefit out of their prey. This guy is headed for a lifetime in jail or a lethal injection. Mostly, it looks like he just lost his mind...as tends to happen to species of all sorts...armed and unarmed.

He might consider himself to be either one. We'll have to wait and see. Interesting none of those armed sheep took him down. Concealed carry is incredibly popular in CO. Maybe the kevlar scared them off?

Looks like one of the sheep just lit up an Aurora Colorado movie theater...possibly in drag as the Joker. 50 casualties, 12 dead. Looks like another version of the shooting of the Democratic congresswoman and Republican judge and the kids and people who got blasted in Arizona last year. AR-15 semi-automatic this time. It will be interesting to see how someone this sick got his peaches.

Not sure I understand your subtext here, JD. If you're saying humans are too insignificant to affect climate, the data doesn't really bear that out. Even before people were unleashing accumulated eons of carbon deposits, the biota apparently had an effect on climate. If you're saying we can't control OURSELVES, and the current issue with greenhouses gases are a form of pollution, then we have some common ground and that makes a lot of sense to me based on what the numbers show. If you mean the 2nd option, then yes, it's an open question if we'll have the intelligence to side-step this problem and that's really where the real debate exists. Maybe I'm just getting my hopes up for nothing though...since you seem to be buying into the "science makes things up" conspiracy nonsense here...

Well it's reassuring to learn you're applying a mechanical template to the problem. That's the wrong template, but that's the kind of error you'll fall into when you try to plug it into biological parameters so at I can at least buy into your sincerity. The planet is not a circuit board. There are biological systems at work here and those are too complex to expect to explain 100% of the variance in them. Ever. Still, once you've explained over 50% of the variance, you've got a model that's useful for predictions. Basic biological principles like the effect of nutrients on productivity only explain 50% of the variability in productivity in lakes but they're still used effectively to manage lakes. From decades of experience with regression analysis, I can tell you the graph you're citing explains well over 90% of the variability in carbon levels over the last 50 years. If it's less than 95% I would be shocked. The numbers you're looking at are mostly RESIDUAL variance left over after the over all increase has been subtracted from the raw numbers. The bottom line point is that the graph is still incredibly regular and heading upward. Some slop (unexplained variance) is inevitable. We know what the influence of the drivers is on the system as a whole but no one will be able to say, ever, with 100% certainty exactly what next year's temperatures will be. 92 was the Pinotubo year...ash in the atmosphere reduced productivity and cooled the planet considerably that year. Most events from 92 are anamolous to some degree. 99, I don't know but some one else might know. The data is in the models, along with solar influences, volcanic activity, and all the other things that are known to influence climate.

Wayne, there's no drop in that data, what are you talking about? Each of those years represents the amount of GROWTH in CO2 in the atmosphere over that year. That graph is as straighforward as anything gets in nature. Click on the link that builds the graph using animation from year to year. The carbon is rising as regularly as you're breathing right now. What does that have to do with Al Gore???

Wayne, it's hard to understand what you're objecting to in the data. The variability in those graphs is minor stuff compared to the tail at the end. The peaks you speak of are half the size of the one we're in now. I think it's clear to anyone who's paying attention that plenty of other things are affecting climate. But during THIS time, under THESE conditions, the thing that has a disproportionate influence compared to the past is CO2. Our carbon emissions are the source of that spike. SB, beyond ice pack data, we have ice out data, tree ring data, satellite data, glacial data and on and on and on that all fit into a clear pattern. We're looking at something over 500 million in fire damages in Colorado this summer. Nationwide, the price tag for the drought will run into the billions, and if it drags on into next year things will start to get really serious. The world isn't going to end, but we're starting to pay the price. I've had this experience already, watching the reef unravel in Belize. There will be more of this ahead. It would be fine to go home and talk about toilet training and forget about all this, but these issues will come back again and again and again over the years. Those kids in diapers today will pay the price for climate change tomorrow. We're a democracy. We have a direct influence over the government and policy they adopt. Our views determine the paths the major parties take, not the other way around. We are not helpless.

Actually, I fish with people who disagree with me on this topic all the time. But they're not name callers and they do their best to be accurate. A good debate can be a pleasure, but I'd rather not listen to nonsense when I can help it. Extreme positions like... 1. Thinking the entire scientific community has invented all this data and is lying to us? 2. Framing small disagreements in the degree of warming to come as a complete unraveling of a strong scientific consensus? 3. Pointing out single weather events as some kind of evidence that the climate is not changing? If that's what one side has to work with, they don't have any option but to push the discussion off the rails because it's about to run over them like a 300 foot tall Colorado wildfire.. ...or at least that's what us chicken little tools think.

Yes, Jerry, climate has cycled forever. The economy, however, has not been along for the ride on a cycle like this one. We've covered that and you haven't addressed that point. We're 0.7 degrees into a 3 degree rise and the costs are already starting to mount up. The sky won't fall if we end up devoting 25% of our GDP to fixing damage from climate, but that's a serious problem that deserves a serious discussion. If you'd like to write off decades of careful science behind as "Al Gore's rhetoric" then you're not interested in a real discussion and I'm not losing much if you walk away. A mature person doesn't settle for a dishonest exchange.

Jerry, you seem to like that "chicken little" term. I gotta say I'm probably not going to spend much time on a lake with someone who's comfortable throwing terms like that around on the strength of a half baked analysis. You'd like to frame this as a friendly disagreement, but the kinds of things you're saying just aren't honest. ONE German you cited has changed his mind and you're trying to say that represents the whole country. There's just no sensible way to respond to that and if someone in my boat tried to pull crud like that, I'd prefer they were on the shore...or back in town. Go read the studies and look at the actual data.

I have sweet corn planted in the garden this year and I'm amazed by the number of bees on the tassels right now. On any given plant there seem to be 6 or 8 at a time. That's a wind pollinated plant, but they're sure helping themselves at a furious pace. Any idea what corn pollen honey tastes like?

Jerry, it is a complete fabrication that the scientific consensus around global warming has changed in any appreciable way. It has never been hard to find fringe scientists who disagree with the consensus. There are 3,000 members of the National Academy of Sciences. 3% of them disagree with global warming...that leaves 30 reputable people you could have dug up at any time who disagree with the consensus. There have been numerous "position papers" by these little pockets of holdouts, one of them had up to 300 signatures (many of them mechanical engineers, doctors and people entirely out of their field). The solar hypothesis has been completely refuted. If you knew Lovelock, you'd never bring him up as a reputable source. He's the guy who came up with the "Gaia hypothesis" that the Earth is a living organism and he has provoked unlimited amounts of eye rolling in academic circles over the decades. Most ecologists don't consider him reputable. He's a crackpot and his previous position that global warming would be cataclysmic was never the mainstream view. If he is backing off that, then he's merely getting back into line. Quite to the contrary to a disintegrating consensus, new studies are now linking the current drought directly to global warming. http://www1.ncdc.noa...erson-et-al.pdf To talk about a scientific reversal now is complete nonsense.