Tim Smith

Yep. It confronted the statement Jeb made that global warming policy was "alarmist" by citing current policy goals...and asking how they were alarmist. No one (edit) Several people posting have not answered that point yet.

That's true, Jerry. You started off your comments with personal smears and name calling and other things I don't respect. You seemed pretty proud of all that and I don't care to spend time with you if that's the kind of person you are. I don't fish with liberals who do that either. Personal comments get threads shut down (which is probably the main reason this thread has been hijacked by personal comments from the denial crowd). Somebody lecture us about respecting the forum some more.

I do want to debate this issue. It was divisive before I got here, but it's important enough to get it right. I'm sorry you chose to make this personal (and again off topic) Jeb, instead of taking responsibility for what you've said. Seems a mature person like yourself would take a different route. I'll point out one last time it's an awfully convenient choice you've made. Looks like we're done here. Chief has cleared the room.

Jeb. You're still off topic. Saying that concerns about global warming are "alarmism" isn't fair to the science, policy and thinking around this issue. Why not take responsibility for what you've said and defend the point instead of trying to censor the debate. And yes, of course it's a debate. You can chose to get upset about it if you want, but you're the only one doing it here.

Conservation runs on policy and if there's going to be a conservation forum at all, these kinds of things will be in it. I'm aware that some people don't like a strongly held argument. I'm counting on the fact that others have enough self confidence not to take a debate personally. I'm also aware that good fishing conservation groups have run and hid from this issue like frightened little girls because they have to pander to members who think they can't be a good ol' boy club and take climate science seriously. It's not the administration that needs a phone call. It's every day people who vote and send know-nothings into elected office. As for the personal notes, I've pretty much done more than my part for this issue and I'll keep doing it. It's not like the solutions to this problem are easy or easy to arrive at. Contrary to what you say, I've learned a lot from people like Wayne on the other side of this issue. Sorry you're offended. There was a time that would have bothered me.

Guys, you're making yourselves ridiculous. Look at the list of GW posts on the conservation forum. Some are Xed. Some go on for weeks with Phil's explicit blessing. Phil has his back covered with that pinned notice at the top (because some people clearly can't handle the issue and have to wander into name calling and slander), but he's not against free speech or open discussion....like some people clearly are. The original question here was...what's so alarmist about the policy goals posted above. The fact that we're in this discussion instead clearly means that no one can answer that and they're out of excuses. Logic is inexorable.

Nice try, Jeb. I've talked to Phil about this multiple times. It's his forum and if he changes his positions I'll gladly stand down. In the meantime, any disrespect here is your disrespect for free speech.. You're not planning to cause him trouble because someone talked about something you didn't like on his forum. Are you?

Wetland treatments help. They settle out the phosphorus and help with denitrification. It's usually best to put them at the end of typical waste treatment programs... ...but watch out for oxygen dead zones in the immediate vicinity. They help but they're not pretty. They don't do much to the prozac and estrogen and viagra. You have to do superoxidation to clean out that and THAT is expensive. Oranges?

I think you're right about the sewage treatment situation, Wayne. The sewage treatment industry people I have watched seem pretty hostile to the idea of making them improve their performance on nutrient removal. As far as they're concerned, water quality is much better than it was 40 years ago so we should just all be grateful and shut our yapping. It would take quite a bit more money and time and space to make significant improvements from where we are right now. As water resources become more limiting, we may eventually have to make that investment. Some might say screw the rivers and lakes and just filter the water we drink. Hopefully we have higher standards than that. Make no mistake, though. Sewage treatment (our bathrooms and kitchens etc) is our biggest nutrient pollution source by far.

I think we can agree that all the real questions left really boil down to "how much", Wayne. Mainstream climatology, however, is quite convinced that greenhouse gases are having a major effect. The temperature rise in the last 100 years is vastly faster than any other in the last 10,000. That happened during a time the large scale patterns say the planet should be cooling. Thank goodness the argument about whether or not there is actually a rise in temperatures has settled to the far margins of the debate. Fish stocks are already being affected, and that's just going to get worse. BASS, TU and other fishing conservation groups conceded this point years ago. The leaderships of quite a few other organizations are still afraid (and I don't mean unconvinced, I mean AFRAID) to move on the adaptation agenda without more support from their members. I'd really like to see thinking people like you acknowledge that it's time to deal with these temperature changes and brace for what's to come.

Good comments here. Just a couple of add-ons.... Both filamentous and pelagic algae can contribute to dissolved oxygen (DO) problems, but in small to medium streams it's almost always filamentous algae. The bigger the body of water, the more important the open-water, free-floating algae become for water quality (think about the ratio of surface area to volume). Heat also plays a role in reduced water quality by accelerating the rate of metabolism in the lower water column. That creates a reducing environment at the substrate which frees inorganic phosphorus and releases it into the water column. Wayne, there's usually not an "exotic plant" angle involved with DO problems because algae spores of most species are already everywhere, boats or no boats. A large stand of aquatic plants can die back annually and cause problems over the long term, but that's often a function of how rich in nutrient the substrate is already.

Here are the goals of the current administration regarding natural resources and the warming of the climate (from the latest American Fisheries Society web feed): * Conserve habitat to support healthy fish, wildlife, and plant populations and ecosystem functions; * Manage species and habitats to protect ecosystem functions and provide sustainable commercial, subsistence, recreational and cultural use; * Enhance capacity for effective management; * Support adaptive management through integrated observation and monitoring and use of decision support tools; * Increase knowledge and information on impacts and responses of fish, wildlife, and plants; * Increase awareness and motivate action to safeguard fish, wildlife,and plants; and * Reduce non-climate stressors to help fish, wildlife, plants, and ecosystems adapt. In other words, keep the same goals you've had all along, but focus some of your resources (overall less resources than you've had in the past) into adapting to patterns of rising temperatures and changing precipitation (that are already well underway). Maybe someone a lot smarter than me can help us find the parts of this that are alarmist hysteria..

...yes it goes on and on my friends.

The fire on Poudre is part of a 25+ year trend. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate-fire.html Jerry's little cold snap in March is a minor outlier in a trend of rising global temperatures well past a century old. I like how deniers keep comparing things that aren't comparable.

Signed it. Good luck with this one. The CAFO's are lawyered up layers deep. Hopefully a National River will have more leverage than typically is afforded the resource.

If we're "inching toward a cliff in the fog". Who's to say where this ends up. The Venus scenario is sort of the "worst of all possible worlds" in terms of global warming outcomes. It's in the realm of possibility, but I don't think most climate experts aren't expecting it to happen. As Wayne points, out we can't be entirely certain. What climatologists are pretty well certain about is the 3 degree C increase (we're about 1/4 of the way into that already) that is more or less inevitable now. That's going to be bad enough. For instance If you're expecting to fish the lower Poudre this year, you can pretty much forget it. The watershed is already on fire again with 1000 acres gone on top of the 200 square miles that burned in there last year. We're about to start water rationing in about a month out here in Denver...really funny stuff. Jeb, Phil has explained over and over that he's not going to X a climate thread until someone goes personal or profane.

That would be the case on the Clinch River in Tennessee. In this case it was probably Neosho madtom...or an ivory billed woodpecker.

View My Video Yeah. Pretty terrible to have animals like these in your state. Who would want that?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/08/us-japan-giantsquid-idUSBRE90705O20130108?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&rpc=935 Pretty amazing to finally find an actual monster. It looks exactly like those old drawings of sea monsters pulling boats underwater. This one's a baby but giant squid carcasses can reach 18 meters. Maybe we should put these Japanese scientists to work finding bigfoot.

Joe, it's fishing forum 101 that you don't post fishing spots on the internet. On some forums, they'll pull down your post if you even think about doing that. Some lame brain just wrote a huge expose' about the small stream where I used to catch 20s and 18s on a regular basis and it won't be long till it suffers the same fate as the one Mitch has mentioned. If you want fishing spots you have to earn them. Learn the ropes by research, wit, and experimentation or make (or pay) a friend who's willing to show you where to start... ...and when you do make that friend don't blab his best spots to everyone else.

I have been tremendously cheap with fishing gear my whole life. I think that may have started the day dad shattered his split bamboo fly rod fishing for bluegill. Some things are just overkill. For more typical stream time, the high end stuff is better but you reach a level of diminishing returns. Doing field work, which would sometimes amount to 40 hard hours a week on the water, I actually found that I spent less money if I bought cheap waders because the expensive ones weren't going to stand up to the abuse either. Better to shred a 20 dollar pair of waders than a 200 pair. I'm still a hack fly fisher so I'm not spending more than the 400 or so I've invested so far in rods and reels until my skills are substantially improved. For spinning gear, where I do feel proficient, I never saw a performance reason to reach beyond the 100 dollar mark. I hit my targets and catch as much as the guys with the high dollar gear.

One note of comfort, LRF and Al. In 1988, the last major drought in the Midwest, Illinois Natural History Survey scientists did an experiment to find out how long it takes small streams to recover from drought. They went into the last remaining pools in dried out streams and killed the remaining fish populations. Then they measured the recovery of the streams when the rains began the next year. Recovery time was short and within 2 years, there was no measurable difference in pre and post drought fish populations. If the rains will come back, the streams will bounce back.

Worse and worse. On December 1st, heavy winds have pushed the Fern Lake fire over the fire lines. Moraine View campground has burned. The meadow where the elk harem on the Big Thompson by Bear Lake Road has burned. I assume all the woods down the Big Thompson canyon have burned. The east entry to the National Park is closed. 500 homes in Estes Park have been evacuated. The 40% containment that had kept the fire in check is gone with 4,000 acres burned so far. We're at 50% of normal snow pack with no snow in sight. If you've been to Rocky Mountain National Park you'll recognize the site in this link, You've never seen it look like this before. http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_22105770/strong-winds-fuel-fern-lake-fire-force-evacuations

Greenback trout edition. Best. Outdoor videos. Ever.

I think it's a mule. Somebody better shoot it.