Tim Smith

You're still inconsistent, Wayne. If people are irrelevant to global warming then why bother doing anything at all. ...and if you're looking for an R2 of 1.00 in any biological process that just doesn't happen. As has been pointed out (over and over and over and over) there are many processes that affect climate. The amount of particulates in the air was repressing temperatures until we cleaned most of them up, for instance. http://www.seas.harv...n-united-states The trends respond to all the drivers but over the long haul the carbon trend matches up best.

If that were the only data available your comment might be useful. But this is only one trend among a great number of trends that show a long period of warming. Reference the graph posted earlier in this discussion for a start. If you like, I can drag up the tree ring data and ice core data and whatever else we need. I shouldn't have to make that point if you were serious about this at all. But you're not.

That's why you don't listen to just anyone. Logic has rules and science makes predictions that come true....for instance over 300 straight months with above average global temperatures. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/

We're 4 pages in...do you want the whole bibliography for everything that's been touched on so far? We can do that. We did this for 2 years on smallies.com. The bottom line was that there is no amount of evidence for the denial side because they think the scientists are liars and when you pin the deniers down with fact and evidence they just dismiss it as a conspiracy. You can cover that with humor or sarcasm or however you want to ice it... ...but underneath it's the same old...stuff. But fine. Name a topic. 500 year old Chinese data set? Sure. Let's see it.

...and to start, it's not pig farts that are the problem. Pigs have lower intestinal fermentation and don't produce many greenhouse gasses. It's ruminants like cows that contribute about 25% of the greenhouses gases currently extant by breaking down cellulose that would normally remained inert. If you want a citation, you can dig it up here...http://books.google....id=FqAG6jeihj8C One of the the authors is a friend of mine. He also studies pig intestines (and ostrich farts and fish farts and iguana farts). Apparently the private sector holds him in higher esteem than you do since a big chunk of his money comes from there.

Ok. Where do you want to start. We can do book chapter and verse as long as there's sentient life out there to look at it. The non-sentient life can stick to their conspiracy theories.

Right. So the 97% of the National Academy of Science (the top scientists in every field across the nation) as well as every other national body of scientists in every other country accepts climate change science... ...but you wave your Farmer's Almanac...and snakes, I suppose...and dredge up an irrelevant point about experimental design (that's an N of 1, by the way, good luck framing that experiment) and you know better than all the assembled scientists in the world what is and is not valid science. By your measure, no environmental science is science because on scales that size no experiment is possible. Good job. You just wrote off a big chunk of the fisheries science of the 20th century too. The tree ring data currently extant is consistent with the human role in the current temperature rise. That's where the hockey stick comes from the deniers spent so much time trying to discredit.

Yeah. Jeremy was trying to pawn off Mongolian salmon as man killers recently. That guy could make goldfish into man eaters. It won't last the winter.

Jerry you may not want alternative energy but you're in a pretty small boat with that view. We're squeezing the sponge one last time from our domestic oil reserves...the rotting oil pumps from the early 20th century in Oil City Louisiana near my home town now have tiny little new wells spaced between them...but most of those have already stopped pumping. Fracking will carry us a little farther and ruin the ground water many of us depend on in the process. You're welcome to your view, but it's your view. Most people want new energy sources. They've just got a 500 pound oil industry gorilla standing between them and it.

Forehead slap. How many denial arguments have I seen arguing that NONE of the current scientific data is any good because a handful of sites are too close to a building or had a parking lot built beside them or the instruments weren't adequate 100 years ago... ...yet this pre-scientific Chinese data...which even if it were accurate is merely regional at best...that somehow trumps a global data network plus data from glaciers, tree rings, lake, animal and plant ranges? Hard to see how you're looking at the available data based on what you posted here.

Uh huh. So you say the numbers are fudged yet you accept the science? How many sides of your mouth do you have, Wayne? You drag up bogus objections you don't even believe and say it's all about money and none of this really matters and everyone's a prostitute.... ...when the point that is beyond obvious is that nothing serious is going to get done as long as the cynical are bilking the ignorant. The political will to become truly energy independent will never emerge until that kind of garbage stops. You might know a thing or two about climate change but you're providing cover for the naive to keep their heads in the sand. Romney was in Craig, Colorado last week (I was too, missed him by a day) talking about how requiring development of alternative energy was starving children and grandmothers (supported by the fossil fuel industry around Craig). Hmmm. I guess there are lots of starving people out there in the oil industry these days. Those record profits don't spread very far, huh? Less carbon is a far better option than the likely disasters the other policy alternatives entail. We may indeed be too late to stop this thing but if you were arguing in good conscience you'd stick to facts instead of playing the fool.

Ridiculous. There are no fudged figures in any of the climate reports and when the rare error is found (such as 2 of the 82 glaciers currently being monitored all over the globe) it is corrected. You twist the science to suit your ends and then try to smear Al Gore and whoever isn't convenient to your view of how you'd prefer things to be. There aren't many nice ways to frame the moral failures on the denial side. "Ridiculous" will have to do for now.

http://brooksmith.blogspot.com/2012/06/steamboat-springs-craig-and-flattops.html Had a good Memorial Day weekend.

The Hewlett fire in Poudre Canyon is hazing up the Front Range in Colorado this morning. Fire fighters are having a hard time containing the blaze because of steep terrain and unusually dry conditions. Second major forest fire so far this spring that has sent smoke into the Denver area. We've had some rains recently but we're still behind.

In my experience there's no way there's enough careful observation out there for store owners and even regulators to distinguish between different species of crayfish. Also, it's not just generalists that are the problem. Rusties trade on aggression. They succeed because they grow quicky through their most vulnerable small sizes, grow massive claws that fend off fish more effectively than other crayfish species, they evict other crayfish species from refuge, and they hybridize with the local species. No one would have guessed this could have happened before it actually happened. It would take a LOT of research to know which crayfish would be benign. We probably still wouldn't know once we were done.

Man those reaches look familiar. I have a pretty strong suspicion what county this is. ...actually makes me miss Illinois.

That's a great question. The hormone mimics don't really accomplish a sex change in bass. They just shift the males to a more feminized type and an ineffective breeder. You can do the same thing with other species and you can also make females more masculine by exposing them to testosterone or androsterone. Higher temperature, however, is known to shift sex ratios in fish toward more males http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0002837 but I don't know if that has been tested in bass. There are ongoing concerns about how climate change might affect the reproductive potential of fish populations if the rate of change outstrips the ability of natural selection to readjust.

This is also extremely important. Crayfish ranges, especially in the Ozarks, can be pretty narrow. Rusty crayfish were in Kentucky and parts of Indiana and no particular problem since they were locally adapted. Move them over the border into an Illinois stream where nothing is adapted to them and they beat the holy snot out of it.

This is the core reason I can't really agree with the idea that the stores be allowed to sell native crayfish. Crayfish behave in hugely different ways from species to species but the average person won't have the first clue how to tell them apart. I didn't let field technicians ID crayfish species on their own until they had been working with them for several weeks and even then some of them couldn't do it. To almost everyone involved (except the crayfish and the organisms they impact) a crayfish is a crayfish is a crayfish. Add to that the fact that the fact that a good percentage of people don't really care what damage they do anyway and banning crayfish for sale as bait is probably the only way this will work. You can trap crayfish in soft bottomed systems too (focus on the weed patches and any bits of hard cover you can find). Don't worry about debate. It's good to see differing views on things. That's what a forum's for.

First of all the motivation to ban crayfish sales comes entirely from the need to stop invasive crayfish. There are no large corporations trafficking in live crayfish in a way that should compete with baitshops.Google up Chris Taylor and you'll find the nation's leading crayfish expert and the leading initiator of this effort nation-wide. Dr. Taylor has spent just as much time trying to prevent the import of Australian yabbies (i.e. Cherax destructor) as he has trying to prevent bait shops from shuffling crayfish. The crayfish you can get shipped to your door are food grade items, usually Procambarus clarkii or Procambarus acutus (red swamp and White River crayfish). Those sales are regulated by the normal food agencies. The ecological effects of those crayfish species are well known and those species occur all over the Midwest. Moreover, they're shipped out at a size appropriate for eating, not for use as bait. The few times I've used crayfish as bait, they were easily gotten by turning over a few rocks or setting out a minnow trap. All the years I've been going to baitshops I've rarely seen crayfish for sale as bait. From the outside, it looks like a pretty hard case to make that banning crayfish sales is going to do anyone any harm. On the other side of the coin, the research is very clear that invasive crayfish can do heavy damage. Just about any crayfish can end up in a bait shop, and they have a track record of having caused serious problems. Invasive rusty crayfish (Orconectes rusticus) now occur in many streams in densities over 10/m2 as a direct result of introductions from bait buckets. At that density, they wipe out other crayfish species, aquatic plants, other invertebrates and have the potential to negatively affect fish species. Those were spread by bait bucket introductions. They compete with other species for cover and when certain kinds of species get moved into new watersheds they can drive out native species altogether. This one's pretty clear. If you want to use crayfish for bait, spend an extra 30 minutes catching them yourself in the system you're fishing.

Thanks OTF.

Snow pack in March was less than 40% of normal on the Front Range and they're starting to make plans for water conservation this summer. I was on the Big Thompson yesterday and it wasn't much higher than it was last September. If you're coming out to fish this year, plan accordingly. Low water and wildfires likely.

Recently had a nice trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, fishing the Big Thompson Caynon. On the way back, encountered elk on the trail and had a little disagreement with a bystander (also photographing elk) about what constitutes "approach". I'm all for avoiding wildlife harassment, but I do like to be able to photograph them as well and I'd like to be able to follow the trail back to my car without being thought of as a felon. I wonder how much is really expected? The full post is here...http://brooksmith.bl...k-in-rocky.html

From the AFS webfeed: Senate Agriculture Committee's Farm Bill upholds key conservation programs, includes provisions important to private lands conservation and hunting and angling WASHINGTON - As the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee finalizes its version of the 2012 Farm Bill, which sustains millions of acres of valuable private lands fish and wildlife habitat, prominent sportsmen's groups urged swift action by the full Congress to expedite passage of this key legislation, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership announced today. Members of the TRCP <http://www.trcp.org/issues/agriculture/the-agriculture-and-wildlife-working -group> Agriculture and Wildlife Working Group, which advocates on behalf of sensible and successful farm conservation programs, offered praise to Senate decision makers for their efforts to maintain hunting and angling opportunities relied upon by sportsmen across the nation. "These are trying times for private lands conservation funding, but thanks to the leadership of Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow and Ranking Member Pat Roberts, the Senate Farm Bill makes the most of limited dollars," said Steve Kline, director of the TRCP Center for Agricultural and Private Lands. "By strengthening programs through sound policy, the Senate Farm Bill makes the conservation title more efficient and more user friendly, a victory for responsible resources management. American sportsmen commend the Senate Agriculture Committee for producing the best possible Farm Bill under circumstances that are challenging at best." Jennifer Mock Schaeffer, Farm Bill coordinator for the <http://www.fishwildlife.org/> Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies and AWWG chair, affirmed that overall the Senate Committee maintains the functions of the Farm Bill's conservation title, although many of the program names have changed and funds have been reallocated accordingly. "The Senate Agriculture Committee worked admirably at making the most of a very unfortunate national budget situation," said Mock Schaeffer. "We sincerely appreciate Chairwoman Stabenow's and Senator Roberts' commitment to continue funding for conservation programs at reasonable levels - and their acknowledgement that conservation is a significant component of working agriculture. "As budgets grow even tighter in the months to come, Congress must work together to pass a Farm Bill before the end of 2012," continued Mock Schaeffer. "As the Senate Agriculture Committee concludes its process by reporting a bill to the floor, we look forward to working with both the full Senate and the House to prioritize passage of the Farm Bill." Especially important in the Senate's effort was the inclusion of a strong Sodsaver provision. Initially proposed as an amendment by Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the provision was adopted in the underlying bill by committee leadership prior to the markup. Sodsaver promotes land management practices that facilitate the conservation of native grasslands. The program is important to fish and wildlife and valued by sportsmen. The committee's action on this critical issue drew loud praise from the TRCP and its partners. "America's grasslands provide essential habitat for fish and wildlife and afford opportunities for outdoor recreation of all kinds," said Dan Wrinn, director of public policy for <http://www.ducks.org> Ducks Unlimited, an AWWG member. "But grasslands are also one of our more threatened ecosystems. Sodsaver presents Congress with a rare opportunity to save taxpayer money, protect an iconic American landscape and preserve the ability of farmers and ranchers to manage their lands as they see fit. We are thrilled that committee leadership recognized the importance of Senator Thune's amendment and included it in the chairwoman's mark." "With Senate deliberations on the Farm Bill continuing and the House beginning hearings on the bill, now is the time for our elected leaders to work together toward swift passage of this critical piece of legislation," said Dave Nomsen, vice president of government affairs for <http://www.pheasantsforever.org/> Pheasants Forever and <http://www.quailforever.org/> Quail Forever, AWWG members. "Farm Bill conservation programs are critical to <http://www.trcp.org/assets/pdf/The_Economic_Value_of_Outdoor_Recreation.pdf > the more than $95 billion in economic activity annually contributed by hunting and angling, and Congress must strive to keep them operating as efficiently as possible."