Peace v. Truth?
Forrest Parkinson
Friends,
Is it possible for Truth and Peace to conflict?
In his message to another thread:
Subject: Re: Justice / Vengeance
From: pen...@garnet.acns.fsu.edu (Bluzcaster)
Date: 7/5/01 12:28 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id: <3b4490ea...@news.fsu.edu>
Paul E. Nunis wrote:
I am guessing that many (...) may not see the value of the Truth
testimony when it conflicts with the Peace testimony. Those who hate
both the Truth, and Peace, count on that.
<snip>
Would we really value a passive 'Peace' on SRQ, or elsewhere if it
were ransomed at the expense of Truth?
I'm wondering, if truth and peace actually do present themselves in conflict,
what are the typical circumstances, mistakes of values, sins, etc., that cause
conflict or cause the appearance of the conflict?
I my own experience, on SRQ, when I seem to find the two in conflict, I'm
usually wondering if I should correct someone, tell them what they ought to do,
not do or defend myself from some misunderstanding. In these cases I am proud,
attached to the respect that others have or fail to have for me and put my
security in someone (thing) other than the Lord. So, on analysis, it usually
has to do with a lack of charity or trust on my part, rather than a real
conflict between peace and truth. But I am only a beginner in the Peace and
Truth testimonies. It is probably not so simple as "such conflict only exists
where sin holds sway."
No doubt, the appearance of such conflicts have been the occasion of heroic
struggles and petty grievances. I'm wondering how they have played themselves
out in people's real experience?
I figure that Paul Nunis and others have their ideas on the subject. I wonder
if in the Quaker tradition there is much experience of such conflicts and how
they were resolved or not resolved.
Thanks
To quote Paul Nunis more fully:
On 05 Jul 2001 12:12:28 GMT, frg...@aol.com (Forrest Parkinson) wrote:
>Gentlemen,
>Please take it outside
Paul Nunis responded:
I am guessing that many (not you, it is just your choice of words
that gives rise to my thoughts) may not see the value of the Truth
testimony when it conflicts with the Peace testimony. Those who hate
both the Truth, and Peace, count on that. To allow statements to go
unquestioned and unchallenged is to tacitly support them if they are
indeed untrue. A challenge to such words strengthens them when they
are supported as true.
As I have stated before, I realize that this may create the
impression of injuring those who have made the statement being
challenged. I believe that this is an incorrect impression. They
should welcome the exposure to a rigorous challenge. A passive
acceptance of anyone's assertions, IMHO does no great service.
Obviously others are free to hold any view that they like, but it is
tiresome to see this constant SRQ smokescreen of implying that any
argument or challenge is a bad thing.
Would we really value a passive 'Peace' on SRQ, or elsewhere if it
were ransomed at the expense of Truth?
thanks
paul
Peace, friends,
Forrest Parkinson
on Long Island
The water a cow laps becomes milk. The water a snake sips becomes venom.
- Anonymous
Marshall Massey
fp> Is it possible for Truth and Peace to conflict?
A lot depends on definitions.
Truth (*especially* with the first letter capitalized) has
multiple meanings in English and in other languages too.
If we define it in a purely secular or worldly manner, as meaning
factual accuracy about some issue, then it is obvious that telling a
truth can under certain circumstances cause strife -- e.g., telling Al
Capone you don't like the color of his tie.
If we define it in a more Judaeo-Christian manner, however, as
meaning the state of being loyal (true) to God who is *shalom* (peace,
but also justice, reconciliation, kindness, love, etc.), then there
can be no conflict. The one who is loyal to God who is *shalom* will
not do or say anything that reduces *shalom*. She will avoid
expressions of fact that are not constructive, and will seek ways to
communicate whatever needs to be communicated that *resolve* strife
rather than either increasing or stifling it.
Similarly with peace. If we define it in a purely secular sense,
as meaning merely outward peace, the absence of strife, then it can be
an unjust peace that denies truths. The peace enforced by law in
America's inner cities is an example of such; another example is the
peace enforced on a family by an abusive family member.
If we define peace as meaning what the Hebrews meant as *shalom*,
on the other hand, there is no conflict with truth. In that sense,
the idea of peace includes the rest of the soul, and the soul cannot
be at rest in the presence of a denial of truth. The search for
peace will therefore include efforts to accept truth in one's own mind
and also to help others feel more at ease with truth in their minds.
The conflict which Paul Nunis sees between the Quaker testimony
for truth and the Quaker testimony for peace derives (IMHO) from a
misunderstanding of both testimonies. To find a conflict between the
two, one must define both truth and peace in a non-*shalom* sense.
But historically, Friends have always taken both terms in the sense
they learned from the scriptures and their own hearts -- the sense of
*shalom*.
fp> It is probably not so simple as "such conflict only
>> exists where sin holds sway."
Well, personally, I think it *is* that simple. But then again, I find
a real wealth of meaning in that statement.
If we understand sin as meaning disobedience to the inward Guide,
then the itch to say something factually accurate, which undercuts
*shalom*, is indeed a sin.
In my personal experience, most seasoned Friends have the sense
that *any* passionate intellectual argument about an issue -- slavery,
capital punishment, libertarianism, free-market economics, global
warming, you name it -- is likely to signify a forgetting of the
inward Guide. For the inward Guide, which dwells in the heart and
rejects such things as antagonism, does not prompt us to argue such
things on grounds of what is correct and what is incorrect (i.e., in
an intellectual way). Rather, it prompts us to listen closely to our
own condition and the other person's, and then to find things that
will open both ourselves and the other person up, so as to reconcile
us both to the things we are each having trouble hearing and
accepting.
Remember that the word the Gospels use, when they tell of Christ
calling people to "repentance", is *metanoia*. *Metanoia* does not
mean being defeated by the weight of the other guy's facts and logic.
*Metanoia* means literally "a change (*meta-*) of mind-and-heart
(*nous*)". In other words, it means a movement from closed-off-ness
to opened-up-ness -- a reconciliation with the possibilities that one
has previously resisted.
If such a reconciliation with possibilities is effected on both
sides, then a mutual acceptance of the facts on both sides will come
much easier. But if, instead, we simply try to shove our facts down
the other person's throat by force of logic and evidence, we are most
likely to hurt *shalom* instead of helping it.
So this really is a situation in which the question is whether
sin -- that is, disobedience to the Holy Spirit, which summons us to
listen, seek reconciliation, and seek acceptance -- is holding sway or
not.
The Quaker way of resolving differences of opinion is *extremely*
hard for most people to master. I've had terrible difficulties with
it myself, because my opinions are forever running away with me. I
think everyone here must know what a failure I've been at practicing
it, at least some of the time! But the older I get, the more I
understand the rightness of it, and the more I do make an effort to
practice the Quaker way.
On this subject, I would highly recommend two Pendle Hill
pamphlets: Barry Morley's *Beyond Consensus. Salvaging Sense of the
Meeting* (Pendle Hill pamphlet 307), and also Sandra L. Cronk's
*Gospel Order. A Quaker Understanding of Faithful Church Community*
(Pendle Hill pamphlet 297). These two pamphlets offer some wonderful
insights into ways in which Friends have proceeded when facts have
divided them.
Some study of Gandhian methods probably wouldn't hurt, either.
With all good wishes,
Marshall Massey <mma...@earthwitness.org>
Bluzcaster
Massey) wrote:
>A lot depends on definitions...
Agreed. Your definitions present a very different set of issues
than those of which I was thinking.
I was not hoping to solve any questions of 'What is Truth?', or 'What
is Peace?'. I was interested in any implication that since peace is
violated due to the conflict created when one challenges another's
assertions, such challenges ought to be inhibited. I don't care for
the logical 'slippery slope' that is provided by such a premise.
thanks
paul
Paul E. Nunis
"There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights...
...The artist must elect to fight for Freedom or for Slavery.
I have made my choice."
Paul Robeson
Marshall Massey
pn> Your definitions present a very different set of issues
>> than those of which I was thinking.
Well, I certainly wasn't trying to frustrate or annoy you by doing
that! But I thought the assumptions underlying the conflict needed to
be dragged out into the light and re-examined. And I still think
that.
pn> I was interested in any implication that since peace is
>> violated due to the conflict created when one challenges
>> another's assertions, such challenges ought to be
>> inhibited.
I hear this concern. I agree with you that truth is not served when
false assertions go unanswered.
But the traditional Quaker way of dealing with this problem is to
look for a way of responding to the other person's assertions that
will open the other's mind and heart, rather than just challenging the
assertions and getting mired in verbal conflict.
I am actually trying to practice this approach myself, which is
why (for instance) I stayed out of the latest greenhouse warming
debate on this newsgroup. I personally see nothing to be gained by
arguing with this newsgroup's closed minds. If I actually have
something new to contribute here, I suspect I can do it better by
contributing a simple informational posting, rather than by leaping
into one of the debate-firestorms I see.
If you disagree that is fine. I'm not trying to stop you from
debating. I am only offering my personal point of view, for whatever
it may be worth to you (probably not much).
ESVB
"Marshall Massey" <mma...@earthwitness.org> wrote in message
news:fl8ekts37pg00u4so...@4ax.com...
>...I stayed out of the latest greenhouse warming
> debate on this newsgroup...
I stayed out because I am, honestly, not very intelligent, and if I ventured
out on this subject I would have been quickly shot down by anybody who knows
the slightest thing concerning the subject!
eric
Forrest Parkinson
>Date: 7/7/01 2:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Eric wrote:
>I stayed out because I am, honestly, not very intelligent, and if I ventured
>out on this subject I would have been quickly shot down
Eric.,
Surely you mean *uninformed* or perhaps inexpert. Intelligence hardly seems to
be a problem for you!
Did you ever hear Chairman Greenspan patiently address the questions of
congress? Sometimes I'm embarrassed for them! Yet he answers with patience and
humility. Sometimes our good politicians even get a glimpse of what he talking
about, fleeting though the occasion may be. Last time I watched him bear up
though this exercise, I thought, what a gift these questions are, even the bad
ones! I do believe that he is learning more from those questions than the
representatives are from the answers.
I think it is well that people with expertise in a subject interact with people
who do not. I am very uninformed about Quakerism and folks have been
wonderfully generous in helping me along. I like to think that people,
especially on a News Group, enjoy expressing their opinions and encouraging
curiosity. Here, posters have the chance to bolster faith!
Joining the fray can be practice in prudence, as can be abstaining. Yet, if the
subject stirs up a part of my heart which says, "Learn this!" then I must face
to the challenge of interacting.
It is possible that folks will be frustrated or annoyed by my naiveté, that
however, is their problem and not mine. Asking an expert to articulate a
position so clearly that it answers a question asked, puts the expert in a
position to clarify and focus her thoughts. It is a favor.
It is possible that I will grow impatient with myself or judge my current lack
of knowledge as belittling myself. That is my problem. I believe the virtues
that drive curiosity are modesty and courage.
BensonJohn
While Woolman disagreed with some of the thinking of the slave-owners, he
didn't "violate peace" by contradicting their assertions in a way that was
bluntly confrontational. He loved the slave-owners. He gently and humbly helped
them to find "truth" on this question for themselves, by examining the evidence
and reasoning together, with love.
The Truth brings peace. The Truth is an experience, not a parcel of
intellectual knowledge.
John
Dennis White
Was Woolman more successful because of his tactics? I believe those he
gently and humbly helped to find truth were primarily Quaker slave-owners.
I'm sure any others were welcome to follow his leading, but I'm not sure
many non-Quakers did at that time. Perhaps former slave-holding Quakers and
an even greater number who had NEVER owned slaves passed Woolman's message
into the general population. My own ancestors left the Quaker experiment at
Wrightboro for Ohio, along with most of the other Quakers there because they
refused to even live in slave-holding territories. Was this spreading to
the winds the seeds of anti-slavery sentiment part of Woolman's plan, or
just a fortuitous coincidence?
Dennis
"BensonJohn" <benso...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010707231032...@ng-fg1.aol.com...
Guy Macon
Don't confuse intelligence with knowledge; the Global Warming True
Believers are, as a rule, *very* smart. They just lack the knowledge
that comes from looking at the actual temperature measurements,
examining the source code of the computer simulations, and trying
to get the simulations to do things like predict the climate from
1990 to 2000 based only on data available in 1990. 'Ignorant' is
easily cured. 'Stupid' is forever. They aren't stupid. And neither
are you.
Timothy Travis
perhaps some of the apparent contradiction between "truth" testimony
and "peace" testimony would seem less important if we use the precise
and original terms--"harmony" (not peace) and "integrity" (not truth).
slavery may seem "peaceful" in the sense that those in it are not, at
the moment, violently seeking freedom. But no accurate account of
slavery ever portrayed it as harmonious except in the most abstract
sense.
confronting evil is an important aspect of integrity--which is
adjusting one's actions to one's beliefs.
It is therefore not a contradiction between two testimonies...but
rather two testimonies that lock together to make each other possible.
peace (as a state of mind, not a testimony)
Timothy M. Travis
Bridge City Preparative Meeting
Portland, Oregon
"...and takes its Kingdom with entreaty,
and not with contention..."
James Naylor
Marshall Massey
dw> Was Woolman more successful because of his tactics? I
>> believe those he gently and humbly helped to find truth
>> were primarily Quaker slave-owners. I'm sure any others
>> were welcome to follow his leading, but I'm not sure many
>> non-Quakers did at that time. Perhaps former slave-
>> holding Quakers and an even greater number who had NEVER
>> owned slaves passed Woolman's message into the general
>> population. My own ancestors left the Quaker experiment
>> at Wrightboro for Ohio, along with most of the other
>> Quakers there because they refused to even live in slave-
>> holding territories. Was this spreading to the winds the
>> seeds of anti-slavery sentiment part of Woolman's plan,
>> or just a fortuitous coincidence?
I know of no evidence that Woolman had a plan. His writings suggest
that he was only seeking to be faithful to his intimations of God's
will and righteousness.
Woolman was only one member of a substantial movement in his own
lifetime, composed of many Friends who hungered for a re-purification
of their Society. This movement included a number of very capable
Quaker leaders and spokespeople besides himself. In such a context,
it was quite reasonable for him to trust that he was only a small part
of what God was doing, and to leave the whole of the work and its
results up to God.
His journal was very influential indeed. It was read and admired
by non-Quaker abolitionists. It had some impact on the women's
suffrage movement. Tolstoy praised it and absorbed many of its
insights; through Tolstoy, a part of its wisdom reached Gandhi, and
through Gandhi, the U.S. civil rights movement. Early twentieth
century U.S. progressives read it and their movement was affected;
mid-to-late twentieth century anti-war activists read it, and so it
influenced the peace movement. Yet I don't see how Woolman could have
planned all that in advance!
Dennis White
My question was rhetorical.
Dennis
"Marshall Massey" <mma...@earthwitness.org> wrote in message
news:kfrgktsnm67k3dq1b...@4ax.com...
Forrest Parkinson
>Date: 7/8/01 12:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>Marshall,
> My question was rhetorical.
>Dennis
Dennis,
I have read (and heard) some very interesting replies to questions even more
obviously intended to be rhetorical. I think that is because rhetorical
questions tend to be built around core concepts about issues worth pondering.
ESVB
"Forrest Parkinson" <frg...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010707180609...@ng-ms1.aol.com...
> >From: "ESVB" es...@earthlink.net
> >Date: 7/7/01 2:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>
> Eric wrote:
>
> >I stayed out because I am, honestly, not very intelligent, and if I
ventured
> >out on this subject I would have been quickly shot down
>
> Eric.,
>
> Surely you mean *uninformed* or perhaps inexpert. Intelligence hardly
seems to
> be a problem for you!
Thank you for your very wise post!
eric
BensonJohn
I wouldn't say that Woolman had a plan, or tactics. He and the other
anti-slavery ministers had an unusual awareness of God's Plan (perhaps call it
"salvation history and where it's moving now") and a willingness to be led into
participation with love.
John
Dennis White
that Marshall was answering more directly to the facts.
Dennis
"Forrest Parkinson" <frg...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010708132744...@ng-fe1.aol.com...
Marshall Massey
tt> Perhaps some of the apparent contradiction between
>> "truth" testimony and "peace" testimony would seem less
>> important if we use the precise and original terms--
>> "harmony" (not peace) and "integrity" (not truth).
[Etc.]
I don't know whether "harmony" and "integrity" were the original
terms. Maybe they were. But a formal Quaker testimony for peace,
using that exact word, appears in our Declaration of 1660; and
expressions of concern for truthfulness, using the word "truth", were
common in Quaker writings in the 1650s.
Still, I was moved by your posting, Timothy! I find the terms
"harmony" and "integrity" appealing -- particularly "integrity".
Maybe it would be a good idea for us Friends to focus on a
practice of integrity rather than on mere truthfulness. After all, a
focus on literal truthfulness, without a matching commitment to
integrity, seems to encourage people to engage in strategic omissions
and misdirections. Which behavior does all sorts of harm --
-- I think here of the Bills, Clinton and Gates, playing
word-definition games with the authorities in order to
evade the real challenges of accountability.
-- I think of how representatives of American big business
answer the concern over global warming by arguing that
human-caused global warming hasn't happened *yet* --
purposely diverting the discussion away from the actual
concern over *future* dangers posed by humanity's
*continuing* greenhouse gas emissions.
-- I think of those ads run by the timber-and-paper industry,
attempting to justify industry practices by pointing out
that the U.S. has more forests than it had a hundred years
ago, but omitting any mention of the fact that, unlike the
forests of a hundred years ago, our modern forests are
mostly monocultures -- biological deserts, dangerously
vulnerable to die-backs.
-- And I think of all the games played with fine print and
weasel words in manipulative legal documents everywhere!
I don't suppose any of these acts violate truth in the small-t sense
of the word. But they all violate the larger principle of integrity!
The pertinent moral instructions in the Bible -- such as "let
your `Yes' be `Yes' and your `No' be `No'" (James 5:12; cf. Matthew
5:37), and the earlier commandments of Leviticus 19:11-13,15,35-36 --
may seem at first glance to be about truthfulness, but I believe a
thoughtful examination will show that they are all really about
integrity and accountability. It seems to me that integrity, not
just truthfulness, is the basic Biblical concern.
Indeed, integrity has many levels of meaning in our religious
tradition:
-- Integrity of the self, which involves not being divided
against oneself (a recurring theme in scripture).
-- Integrity in personal relationships, responding to the other
with the whole of oneself and not promising (or seeming to
promise) one thing while actually delivering another.
-- Integrity in relation to society, which involves not
dividing the community into contending parties.
-- Integrity in relation to the creation, which involves caring
for, and not abusing, the world and its creatures.
-- Integrity in relation to religion, which means abstaining
from hypocrisy.
-- And of course, integrity toward God: in Quaker language,
"unity with God's will".
Timothy concludes, still speaking of integrity and harmony,
tt> It is therefore not a contradiction between two
>> testimonies...but rather two testimonies that lock
>> together to make each other possible.
I couldn't agree more. This was well-put.
Mike
>
> Maybe it would be a good idea for us Friends to focus on a
> practice of integrity rather than on mere truthfulness. After all, a
> focus on literal truthfulness, without a matching commitment to
> integrity, seems to encourage people to engage in strategic omissions
> and misdirections. Which behavior does all sorts of harm --
>
In your list of the lapse of integrity I would like to include two
favorites:
1) That we condemn terrorism while our own armed forces do it.
2) The Y2K bug was the result of moral timidity on the part of 10s of
thousands of programmers over a period of decades. A great many technical
people knew of the problem long before it came to a head, but there was
always someone reluctant to pass the information up to the next level of
responsibility because it would open a can of worms and cost money. People
were protecting their careers rather than doing a good job because they did
not want to be seen as the one who cost the company a lot of money.
I have been concerned for years about an apparent decline of integrity in
the workplace, where it becomes more important to seem to be doing a good
job than to actually try to do a good job.
Having rebuilt car engines before, I know how important it is to select a
mechanic who has integrity. No matter who rebuilt your engine it will run
just fine. You will not know for 30 to 50 thousand miles if your mechanic
was careful and precise. I used to be able to tell by feeling the bearings
and judging the balance exactly how long a machine would last, and the care
a mechanic takes is directly translated into longevity. Care that no one can
see except himself.
Wakefield
snip
>
> -- I think of those ads run by the timber-and-paper industry,
> attempting to justify industry practices by pointing out
> that the U.S. has more forests than it had a hundred years
> ago, but omitting any mention of the fact that, unlike the
> forests of a hundred years ago, our modern forests are
> mostly monocultures -- biological deserts, dangerously
> vulnerable to die-backs.
snip
I don't see that in a lot of the forestry plantations I have been
touring. There is indeed deliberate planting and selection of species, but
they seem to be in plots of a few acres each, and much space also given to
'wild' areas. Admittedly what my eyes have seen is only a small portion of
what there is. But I have looked at Bowater and Sappi properties quite a
bit. The forestors have a good amount of education. Admittedly they need to
respond to market-driven agendas, or they will be out of a job. But the
market is very diverse- lumber, pulp, landscape trees- and then areas for
recreation- take some tours. See what you see. Get back and tell us about
it. Bring pictures. I have most recently been up around Flagstaff Lake in
Maine. Ravingly beautiful plantations. Hardly monocultures, and certainly
not biological deserts. It was an education.
--
-- L Wakefield, owner and operator of the beastly truck heretik, that
refuses to stay between the lines when parking --
Timothy Travis
Massey) wrote:
>Timothy Travis writes,
>
> tt> Perhaps some of the apparent contradiction between
> >> "truth" testimony and "peace" testimony would seem less
> >> important if we use the precise and original terms--
> >> "harmony" (not peace) and "integrity" (not truth).
>
> [Etc.]
>
>I don't know whether "harmony" and "integrity" were the original
>terms. Maybe they were. But a formal Quaker testimony for peace,
>using that exact word, appears in our Declaration of 1660; and
>expressions of concern for truthfulness, using the word "truth", were
>common in Quaker writings in the 1650s.
It is my understanding that these were the original terms, but that is
only my understanding. Many here can comment on the shortcoming of my
understanding, at times.
It can be confusing to me because of the way the term "testimony" is
used. For example, early Friends spoke of the "hat testimony"--which
is clearly a part of the equality testimony, as is the "plain speech"
testimony. Neither of those has stood the test of time, because the
evils to which they called attention and protested have now taken on
different forms and other "testimonies" are necessary to address them.
The overall concept of equality has remained relevant and so, to my
mind, and to most conservative Friends, I think, that is the label for
the testimony that is most helpful.
I find it useful to think in terms of a basic constellation of
harmony, simplicity, equality integrity and community. Other
testimonies seem to fit into those and, when they are placed in such
context, become weightier and more clear from their association with
the other aspects of those categories.
I especially think this is true, as you stated in your post, about
truth. one can be truthful and damage someone very much, but when
truth is understood in context (as a part of integrity, in conjunction
with harmony and community) it will not mislead one into destructive
behavior. How often, for example, has a focus on "peace" as the
absence of national war led people to participate in war. "Peace is
our Profession," said the Strategic Air Command. Indeed. Hardly
squares with harmony. As I heard the other day at work (in the state
capitol); "just enough truth to mislead."
>
> Still, I was moved by your posting, Timothy! I find the terms
>"harmony" and "integrity" appealing -- particularly "integrity".
thank you. There is a good Pendle Hill pamphlet on Integrity that I
carried around for a while. I think it is by Wilmer Cooper.
peace
Timothy M. Travis
Bridge City Preparative Meeting
Portland, Oregon
"They were changed people inwardly, and their
outward lives changed, as a result. These outward
changes were called the testimonies of their lives,
which were now seen as witnesses to the Truth."
--Lloyd Lee Wilson
Russell Nelson
> Is it possible for Truth and Peace to conflict?
If someone says no, they are contending that there is no such thing
as fighting words.
--
-russ nelson <s...@russnelson.com> http://russnelson.com
Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok |
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | #exclude <windows.h>
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX |
ECrownfiel
writes:
>> Is it possible for Truth and Peace to conflict?
>
>If someone says no, they are contending that there is no such thing
>as fighting words.
Syllogism, please?
Marshall Massey
lw> I don't see that in a lot of the forestry plantations I
>> have been touring. ... Admittedly what my eyes have seen
>> is only a small portion of what there is.
Statistics are readily available on forests in the U.S. overall. The
U.S. Dept. of Agriculture and the Worldwatch Institute are both good
sources.
The areas you've been touring sound like real showcases. But
even in Maine where you've been touring, the *rule* -- especially off
the main highways, up toward the northwest -- is still mile upon mile
of fast-growing pine for pulp and paper and commercial lumber. Only a
very small fraction is planted for orchards and recreation. And
virtually *nothing* is planted for the re-establishment of endangered
old-growth ecosystems, which is what would be needed if you were
really serious about comparing the forests of today with those of a
hundred years ago.
And that is Maine. The South and West are worse. There've been
serious die-backs in the South where disease has gotten into the
monocultures, and in the Far West the desertization from erosion on
those steep mountain clearcuts is absolutely appalling.
lw> ...Take some tours. See what you see. Get back and tell
>> us about it.
Thank you for the invitation. Actually, I have already traveled
through commercial forests all over the U.S.! I have been an active
environmentalist for decades, and an active back-country hiker even
longer.
I assure you, the monoculture plantations are everywhere. And
they are still planting monocultures, as I know from talking to
hoedads who plant them.
david christainsen
Friends,
I don' think this is framed correctly.
I want to step outside logic, for just a moment, and be open to intuition.
My answer to Russell's question is YES.
Comments?
In the Light,
David Christainsen
Mike
> attempting to justify industry practices by pointing out
> that the U.S. has more forests than it had a hundred years
> ago, but omitting any mention of the fact that, unlike the
> forests of a hundred years ago, our modern forests are
> mostly monocultures -- biological deserts, dangerously
> vulnerable to die-backs.
>
replant forests for their own future, wouldn't they also have a vital
interest in doing it right so there is no die-off?
If there is a biological danger it seems they would be the first to want to
fix it.
It was strange driving for many miles through planted forests in Western
Natal, all in exact rows like stalks of corn. But there had never been
forests there of any kind at any time before.
Michael
Dennis White
What you say about timber growers would seem so, but sadly it just
isn't the case. The timber industry is more interested in fast growing,
high yield species. Thus, the monoculture, and inferior quality of the
wood. Most plantaions are Hem, Fir and Pine, but as an example scout out
any "old" Oak furniture you may have in the house. Take a quick look at it,
and then compare it to something you bought recently at any moderate price
joint like Home Depot, or Ikea etc. You'll notice the old Oak has much
tighter grain (longer growing period) and higher density. If you ever
bought a 2X4 you'll also know what I mean. Simply put, in a consumer
society that puts more emphasis on quantity rather than quality it is
entirely in the Timber industry's interest to farm trees rather than
re-plant forests.
Dennis
"Mike" <meflyn...@homeNOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:NAt37.3374$4m3.2...@news1.rsm1.occa.home.com...
Russell Nelson
> -- I think of how representatives of American big business
> answer the concern over global warming by arguing that
> human-caused global warming hasn't happened *yet* --
> purposely diverting the discussion away from the actual
> concern over *future* dangers posed by humanity's
> *continuing* greenhouse gas emissions.
I don't think that's the concern. I think the concern is that the
climate models predict that the temperature should have risen already,
and risen most at the poles first. And yet there is no warming at the
poles.
> -- I think of those ads run by the timber-and-paper industry,
> attempting to justify industry practices by pointing out
> that the U.S. has more forests than it had a hundred years
> ago, but omitting any mention of the fact that, unlike the
> forests of a hundred years ago, our modern forests are
> mostly monocultures -- biological deserts, dangerously
> vulnerable to die-backs.
I can't speak to the existance of those forests, because I don't see
any of them. Around here, the forests that have grown back have a
wide variety of trees: maple, ironwood, arbor vitae, hemlock,
basswood, poplar, cherry, birch, and tamarack. Pine too, but not so
much of that. A hundred years ago, St. Lawrence County was basically
treeless. Now it's mostly forest except in the prime agricultural
areas around Madrid and Lisbon.
> -- And I think of all the games played with fine print and
> weasel words in manipulative legal documents everywhere!
I've read a LOT of legal documents, running a business as I do. Most
of them are not manipulative, and the terms in the fine print do not
attempt to mislead. What they do do is spell out in advance exactly
what both parties can expect. You could sign a contract without a lot
of fine print, but the purpose of the fine print is to reduce
unpleasant surprises. Eliminate the fine print (for your sake of
integrity?) and you make people unhappy and disgruntled.
> I don't suppose any of these acts violate truth in the small-t sense
> of the word. But they all violate the larger principle of integrity!
The people who say the first two things you said are the ones who lack
integrity. Almost all the forests of the Northeast are natural, wild
forests supporting a plethora of wildlife. Yes, many acres in the
South and West are planted, and yes, their story needs to be told.
But an integral person won't forget the Northeast forests.
ECrownfiel
<nos...@newsranger.com> writes:
>>>> Is it possible for Truth and Peace to conflict?
>>>
>>>If someone says no, they are contending that there is no such thing
>>>as fighting words.
>>
>>Syllogism, please?
>
>Friends,
>
>I don' think this is framed correctly.
>
>I want to step outside logic, for just a moment, and be open to intuition.
I'm all in favor of stepping outside logic and being open to intuition, but
when someone makes an "IF>THEN" statement, they are willy-nilly using logic.
When they use it inappropriately, it is untruthful. When the logic sounds
dubious to me, I call for a clarification, in the interests of truth and plain
speaking.
Elizabeth
David Christainsen
Friend Elizabeth,
Clarification accepted.
Marshall Massey
mf> It would seem that if the timber industry is going to
>> spend the money to replant forests for their own future,
>> wouldn't they also have a vital interest in doing it
>> right so there is no die-off?
The custom in the business world is to discount the value of future
assets. There are various reasons for doing this -- future assets are
not guaranteed, for instance -- but the principal reason is that money
tied up in future assets, and therefore not available now, must be
offset by other money to keep you going, and if that other money has
to be borrowed, it will cost interest.
So if the interest rate seems likely to average 10% per year,
future assets will be discounted by 10% per year -- this is a standard
discount rate, by the way -- and a $1 billion forest that won't mature
for 150 years, discounted by that annual interest rate, will be worth
$1 billion divided by (1 plus 10%) to the 150th power: a paltry
$618.15 today.
Now let us say that a given region, planted in diverse hardwoods
and constituting a stable, wildlife-friendly ecosystem, will be worth
$1 billion in 150 years; but the same region, planted in a pine-tree
monoculture that can be clearcut in just 35 years, will realize a
profit of $250,000 at clearcutting that time.
The pine-tree planting, discounted at the exact same interest
rate, is worth a whole $8,896.03 today -- 14 times the value of the
stable, diverse hardwood planting. Even if there is a fifty-fifty
chance that the pine tree planting will be killed by rust or by
climate change, it is *still* worth seven times as much to the
corporation making the decision.
And that is why it is so very hard to get corporations to invest
wisely in our grandchildren's future.
mf> It was strange driving for many miles through planted
>> forests in Western Natal, all in exact rows like stalks
>> of corn. But there had never been forests there of any
>> kind at any time before.
OTOH, there *had* been a stable, wildlife-friendly ecosystem there
before, even if it wasn't a forest.
Consider the rights of the creatures living in that earlier
ecosystem. Consider, too, the right of the future Western Natal to
enjoy biological richness and ecological stability.
Russell Nelson
> And that is why it is so very hard to get corporations to invest
> wisely in our grandchildren's future.
Your analysis is correct, but it's not limited to corporations. Any
organization goes through the same analysis. Even worse, politicians
horizon maxes out at the next election, so government organizations
have trouble doing anything that only pays out after time.
The only good solution to the problem you pose is strong property
rights and low property taxes. Individuals (who *do* have an interest
in protecting the interests of their grandchildren) will plant the
hardwood forest.
> Consider the rights of the creatures living in that earlier
> ecosystem.
Marshall, I understand that you want to protect those creatures. But
those creatures have no rights in human society. Only humans have
human rights (which should seem obvious enough). How do you then
ensure that those creatures are protected? By ensuring that
individuals can accumulate and protect land from development.
Dennis White
"Russell Nelson" <nel...@crynwr.com> wrote in message
news:m2u20e6...@desk.crynwr.com...
> mma...@earthwitness.org (Marshall Massey) writes:
>
> > And that is why it is so very hard to get corporations to invest
> > wisely in our grandchildren's future.
>
> Your analysis is correct, but it's not limited to corporations. Any
> organization goes through the same analysis. Even worse, politicians
> horizon maxes out at the next election, so government organizations
> have trouble doing anything that only pays out after time.
****
> Have you ever thought that statements like this are so full of
stereotype that it makes it difficult to see through them and into any
unbiased sincere and honest perspective? "Even worse, politicians horizon
maxes out at the next election..."
> The only good solution to the problem you pose is strong property
> rights and low property taxes. Individuals (who *do* have an interest
> in protecting the interests of their grandchildren) will plant the
> hardwood forest.
*****
Perhaps you have exmples?
>
> > Consider the rights of the creatures living in that earlier
> > ecosystem.
>
> Marshall, I understand that you want to protect those creatures. But
> those creatures have no rights in human society. Only humans have
> human rights (which should seem obvious enough). How do you then
> ensure that those creatures are protected? By ensuring that
> individuals can accumulate and protect land from development.
*****
People usually accumulate land as wealth. Wealth is not inherent in land
unless it has value. Value lies in it's ability to useful...perhaps even
"developed", not as the neighborhood animal sanctuary...unless you are the
Nature Conservancy or someone like that. What is the honest reason that you
hang on to your acreage?
Dennis
Marshall Massey
mm> -- I think of how representatives of American big
>> business answer the concern over global warming by
>> arguing that human-caused global warming hasn't
>> happened *yet* -- purposely diverting the discussion
>> away from the actual concern over *future* dangers
>> posed by humanity's *continuing* greenhouse gas
>> emissions.
Russ Nelson writes,
rn> I don't think that's the concern. I think the concern is
>> that the climate models predict that the temperature
>> should have risen already, and risen most at the poles
>> first. And yet there is no warming at the poles.
But the climate models you refer to only *exist* because there is a
concern about *future* dangers posed by humanity's *continuing*
emissions.
We are worried about *future* greenhouse effects that we fear may
be catastrophic. Because we are worried about those *future* effects,
our governments have crafted something called the Kyoto Protocol,
which is intended to reduce humanity's *continuing* emissions (though
it may not actually succeed in doing so).
All this talk about whether there has *already* been some
greenhouse warming, derives from the desire some scientists feel to
justify this concern about *future* dangers by showing that some of
the things people are worried about have already begun happening.
But it is the *future* dangers that people are really concerned
about. It is the *future* dangers that the Kyoto Protocol is supposed
to remedy. The Kyoto Protocol really can't remedy any warming that
may have already happened, and nobody that I know of is pretending
that it can.
mm> -- I think of those ads run by the timber-and-paper
>> industry, attempting to justify industry practices
>> by pointing out that the U.S. has more forests than
>> it had a hundred years ago, but omitting any mention
>> of the fact that, unlike the forests of a hundred
>> years ago, our modern forests are mostly
>> monocultures -- biological deserts, dangerously
>> vulnerable to die-backs.
rn> I can't speak to the existance of those forests, because
>> I don't see any of them. Around here, the forests that
>> have grown back have a wide variety of trees: maple,
>> ironwood, arbor vitae, hemlock, basswood, poplar, cherry,
>> birch, and tamarack. Pine too, but not so much of that.
>> A hundred years ago, St. Lawrence County was basically
>> treeless. Now it's mostly forest except in the prime
>> agricultural areas around Madrid and Lisbon.
Yes, much of the northeastern U.S. is as you describe (though not all
of it -- the vast tree plantations in Maine and northern Michigan are
not). You are fortunate to live where you do, IMHO.
rn> Almost all the forests of the Northeast are natural, wild
>> forests supporting a plethora of wildlife.
I don't think I'd go quite that far. Even all by itself, northern,
tree-plantation Maine represents a significant chunk of the total
forests of the Northeast.
>> Yes, many acres in the South and West are planted, and
>> yes, their story needs to be told. But an integral
>> person won't forget the Northeast forests.
I didn't. If you will kindly look again at my original language, you
will see that I wrote "most", not "all". That is because I was well
aware of the Northeast, and of other (lesser) areas where forests
also exist that are not predominantly plantations.
mm> -- And I think of all the games played with fine print
>> and weasel words in manipulative legal documents
>> everywhere!
rn> I've read a LOT of legal documents, running a business as
>> I do. Most of them are not manipulative, and the terms
>> in the fine print do not attempt to mislead.
[etc.]
As far as that goes, my experience matches yours. *Most* legal
documents *are* simply intended to make business easier.
But IMHO that does not excuse the manipulative ones, and the
manipulative ones *are* indeed everywhere. Just for example, start
with all those offers you get for credit cards with low introductory
terms (but exploitive terms elsewhere in the contract, literally in
fine print). I suspect anybody in the U.S. with any sort of credit
record at all gets bunches and bunches of those. Or look at the
contracts that auto dealers offer -- plenty of gamey language there.
Or check the language of health insurance contracts nowadays, which
manage to appear to promise much stronger coverage than their authors
have any intention of delivering.
Guy Macon
>
>The custom in the business world is to discount the value of future
>assets. There are various reasons for doing this -- future assets are
>not guaranteed, for instance -- but the principal reason is that money
>tied up in future assets, and therefore not available now, must be
>offset by other money to keep you going, and if that other money has
>to be borrowed, it will cost interest.
>
> So if the interest rate seems likely to average 10% per year,
>future assets will be discounted by 10% per year -- this is a standard
>discount rate, by the way -- and a $1 billion forest that won't mature
>for 150 years, discounted by that annual interest rate, will be worth
>$1 billion divided by (1 plus 10%) to the 150th power: a paltry
>$618.15 today.
>
There is a very good reason good reason to believe that the interest
rate is very unlikely to average 10% per year.
Let's assume that a thrifty Quaker of 300 years ago invested $1
(in some currency that wasn't 100 years in the future!) at 10%
interest and that all of her descendents let it stay in the
account with interest added to the amount in the account.
Using the calculator at http://www.geocities.com/twong18/cfcj.htm
I get a present value of 26 trillion dollars ($26,170,109,961,884.64)
if compounded yearly or 107 trillion dollars ($106,864,745,815,244.62)
if compounded continuously.
This is larger than the gross world product, which is roughly 20
trillion dollars ($20,000,000,000,000.00), and it gets 10 times
bigger every 23 years (235,385 trillion after 400 years!).
Thus we are faced with three logical possibilities:
[1] No individual/descendantss, corporation, or organization has
ever invested a buck and let it ride for hundreds of years.
No exceptions.
[2] Someone is a million times richer than Bill Gates.
[3] You cannot sustain an interest rate of 10% over such long periods.
I believe the third choice to be the most likely to be true.
Guy Macon
> -- I think of how representatives of American big
>business answer the concern over global warming by
>arguing that human-caused global warming hasn't
>happened *yet* -- purposely diverting the discussion
>away from the actual concern over *future* dangers
>posed by humanity's *continuing* greenhouse gas
>emissions.
I think that this is a straw man argument. Most of
the opponents to the policies that the Global Warming
True Believers call for say (with good reason) that
what the Global Warming True Believers say will happen
will not happen.
>We are worried about *future* greenhouse effects that we fear may
>be catastrophic. Because we are worried about those *future* effects,
>our governments have crafted something called the Kyoto Protocol,
>which is intended to reduce humanity's *continuing* emissions (though
>it may not actually succeed in doing so).
I don't remember what country you are in, but I stronly suspect
that it has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
LIST OF COUNTRIES THAT KYOTO SAYS MUST REDUCE C0@ EMMISIONS
(all other countries can put out as much C02 as they please)
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia,
Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany,
Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia,
Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway,
Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, United States
LIST OF COUNTRIES FROM ABOVE LIST THAT HAVE RATIFIED KYOTO:
Not a single one. The U.S. Senatevoted to not ratify Kyoto on
June 12th 1997 on a 95-0 vote and passed a bill banning the use
of any money to implement Kyoto on July 18th, 2000 on a 97-2 vote.
LIST OF COUNTRIES THAT HAVE RATIFIED KYOTO AS OF FEB 5TH, 2000;
Antigua and Barbuda, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Barbados, Bolivia,
Cyprus, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Fiji, Georgia,
Guatemala, Guinea, Honduras, Jamaica, Kiribati, Lesotho, Maldives,
Mexico, Micronesia, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Niue, Palau, Panama,
Paraguay, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu,
Uruguay, Uzbekistan.
Unless you live in one of the countries that ratified Kyoto, your
country is against it.
Let's try it this way... We are in a very real danger of entering
an ice age. (yes, I do believe this.) You are ignoring this very real
danger because it's in the future and you don't see any glaciers *now*.
I have much better evidence of a coming ice age than you have evidence
of coming global warming. You are warning about the wrong danger.
Marshall Massey
rn> Your analysis is correct, but it's not limited to
>> corporations. Any organization goes through the same
>> analysis.
Michael Flynn was asking why the timber industry doesn't plant in the
interests of the long-term future, and because the timber industry in
this country is dominated by giant corporations (Weyerhauser, L-P, GP,
etc.), I answered in terms of corporations.
However, I certainly do not disagree with your observation that
it's not just corporations. It's in fact just a variation on an age-
old *human* problem of short-sightedness.
rn> The only good solution to the problem you pose is strong
>> property rights and low property taxes. Individuals (who
>> *do* have an interest in protecting the interests of their
>> grandchildren) will plant the hardwood forest.
You know, the biggest case of old-growth forest destruction in
Colorado, and one of the biggest in the entire United States, is the
ongoing clearcutting of the Taylor Ranch in San Luis County -- a huge
expanse that was, before its destruction began, the southern anchor
of what remains of the Front Range ecosystem.
The Taylor Ranch is neither government property nor corporate
property. It is private property, an entire 14,000-plus-foot-high
peak of it with land all around below the peak -- owned by the
Taylors, who are the descendants of the U.S. President of that same
name. The Taylors (who themselves live in North Carolina, not
Colorado) are clear-cutting that whole vast ranch in order to get a
quick profit; and they are not replanting the land as it is cut but
just abandoning it. Since it is in a dry, hot, semi-desert region,
but the mountain itself gets heavy winter snows, as it is clear-cut,
the topsoil that anchored the forest is being washed immediately away
with the snowmelt, and the land is then turning to bare rock and
desert. It is a total catastrophe.
Colorado happens to be the only state in the Union that does
*not* regulate timber-cutting on private land, so this catastrophe is
being made possible precisely by the fact that we have some of the
strongest private property rights in the nation.
In fact, there is no form of ownership (or of not-ownership
either) that can prevent abuse by short-sighted human beings. Private
property gets destroyed -- look at the destruction of the Southern
Piedmont in the hands of private property owners for another classic
example. Corporate property gets destroyed, as in the case of the
tree farms. Government property gets destroyed, as in the case of BLM
land.
But the closest thing to a form of land *management* that really
works -- a form that seems to have *historically* protected land much
better than any other known -- is community management by the
immediately local community: what is called commons management. And
it works regardless of whether the land is privately held, corporately
held, or governmentally held.
In Switzerland and Japan, commons management has been used for
centuries, and is still used today, to keep vulnerable country from
being destroyed. In medieval Europe it was used to prevent such
problems as overgrazing. (Yes, the "tragedy of the commons" never did
happen in the places where commons classically existed. Garrett
Hardin simply made it up as a theory, postulating that commons were
left unregulated by the local community, which in fact was never
true.)
In native North America, tribes used commons management to
monitor the wildlife they hunted and protect it from overhunting and
other forms of abuse. In modern North America, residential
communities use parks and zoning (both of them forms of commons
management) to protect open lands and wildlife corridors; rural
communities use soil and water conservation districts (also forms of
commons management) to manage problems like erosion; recreational
communities use zoning and covenants (also forms of commons
management) to protect the openness and beauty of the land.
If we had allowed commons management of forested private land in
San Luis County, Colorado, the local human community, living below the
mountain in an area that is getting destroyed by flooding and silt
from the clearcuts, was ready and eager to step in and enforce zoning
laws that would have prevented the Taylor Ranch from being clear-cut
in an irresponsible fashion. The community wanted to require
selective cutting instead of clearcutting, and to require replanting
in a similar variety of species to what classically existed there.
However, the Taylor family is very Anglo and very rich, and the
local community in San Luis County is very poor (the poorest in the
state) and very Hispanic, and so the courts and legislature
(both Republican-controlled and very ideological) decided to listen to
the Taylors and not to the local human community, and refused to allow
the local community to regulate the land effectively. And so it goes.
rn> Marshall, I understand that you want to protect those
>> creatures. But those creatures have no rights in human
>> society.
They have rights in God's world, and any person or society that
ignores those rights must answer for it to God. When I consider the
extent to which those rights have been ignored in my lifetime, and
continue to be ignored today, I can feel a judgment like a
thundercloud looming over our gasoline-and-concrete civilization.
It has been the age-old task of Friends to persuade humanity to
live by God's rules, rather than risk God's judgment. I really don't
mind carrying on the tradition.
Marshall Massey
gm> ...We are faced with three logical possibilities:
>>
>> [1] No individual/descendantss, corporation, or
>> organization has ever invested a buck and let it ride
>> for hundreds of years. No exceptions.
>>
>> [2] Someone is a million times richer than Bill Gates.
>>
>> [3] You cannot sustain an interest rate of 10% over such
>> long periods.
>>
>> I believe the third choice to be the most likely to be true.
Perhaps I should start my reply by pointing out that interest rates
are not pure profit to the lender. It may cost a corporation 10% per
annum to borrow money from a bank or venture capitalist, but the bank
has overhead to pay, the venture capitalist has a lifestyle to
support, and both have bad investments to cover. And when these
drains on capital are subtracted, the net rate at which capital grows
in a bank's or investor's hands is normally much less than 10% -- in
fact, it is sometimes less than zero. Interest rates can easily be
very high without savings growing much at all, in fact, as happened in
the U.S. "stagflation" of the 1970s, and even more so in the Weimar
Republic of the 1930s.
But let us consider, shall we, what happens to fortunes over
time, once they get large enough to attract some official notice.
Many historians have studied this subject, looking everything
from the Fugger and Rothschild fortunes of the Middle Ages down
through the Boston Brahmins and the Gurneys to the Rockefeller,
Morgan, Ford and Kennedy fortunes of relatively recent times.
And what they've found happens is always and eternally a
combination of four things: (1) the fortune gets divvied up among
the descendants, becoming lots of small fortunes instead of one large
fortune; (2) the descendants spend the investment income from their
inheritance faster than the inheritance makes it (which is easier to
do with a small fortune than with a big one), so that soon they're
dipping into principal and spending their inheritance down to nothing;
(3) bad investments take their toll; and (4) a lot of it gets lifted
by governments -- the kings of Europe helping themselves to their
Jewish bankers' fortunes -- or gets lost in political upheavals and
warfare.
These are the reasons why big fortunes don't just get bigger
until someone owns the whole world. It evidently has relatively
little to do with interest rates.
Marshall Massey
a narrow, literal sense, without displaying integrity:
mm> -- I think of how representatives of American big
>> business answer the concern over global warming by
>> arguing that human-caused global warming hasn't
>> happened *yet* -- purposely diverting the discussion
>> away from the actual concern over *future* dangers
>> posed by humanity's *continuing* greenhouse gas
>> emissions.
Guy Macon comments,
gm> I think that this is a straw man argument. Most of the
>> opponents to the policies that the Global Warming True
>> Believers call for say (with good reason) that what the
>> Global Warming True Believers say will happen will not
>> happen.
But I was not talking about "most of the opponents to the policies".
I was talking about a *specific group of opponents* who have displayed
the sort of behavior I described.
mm> We are worried about *future* greenhouse effects that we
>> fear may be catastrophic. Because we are worried about
>> those *future* effects, our governments have crafted
>> something called the Kyoto Protocol, which is intended to
>> reduce humanity's *continuing* emissions (though it may
>> not actually succeed in doing so).
gm> I don't remember what country you are in, but I stronly
>> suspect that it has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
The governments of the participants in this newsgroup have refused to
*ratify* it, but if my memory serves, they did not refuse to
participate in the *crafting* of it.
The crafting of a treaty involves diplomats from the affected
states thinking through the ideas that the treaty is going to contain,
putting those ideas into words, agreeing on the words, and then
correcting whatever they decide needs to be corrected. All this
happens before the treaties go to the sovereigns of the various states
for ratification.
gm> Let's try it this way... We are in a very real danger
>> of entering an ice age. (yes, I do believe this.) You are
>> ignoring this very real danger because it's in the future
>> and you don't see any glaciers *now*. I have much better
>> evidence of a coming ice age than you have evidence of
>> coming global warming. You are warning about the wrong
>> danger.
I was writing about truth versus integrity, not warning about dangers.
(Well, maybe I *was* warning about the dangers inherent in a lack of
integrity. But I was not warning about *greenhouse warming* dangers.)
Guy Macon
>
>
>In response to my comment about cases in which people are truthful in
>a narrow, literal sense, without displaying integrity:
>
> mm> -- I think of how representatives of American big
> >> business answer the concern over global warming by
> >> arguing that human-caused global warming hasn't
> >> happened *yet* -- purposely diverting the discussion
> >> away from the actual concern over *future* dangers
> >> posed by humanity's *continuing* greenhouse gas
> >> emissions.
>
>Guy Macon comments,
>
> gm> I think that this is a straw man argument. Most of the
> >> opponents to the policies that the Global Warming True
> >> Believers call for say (with good reason) that what the
> >> Global Warming True Believers say will happen will not
> >> happen.
>
>But I was not talking about "most of the opponents to the policies".
>I was talking about a *specific group of opponents* who have displayed
>the sort of behavior I described.
>
My apologies for missing that. Would you care to name a couple of this
specific group of opponents so that I can confirm that thay "answer the
concern over global warming by arguing that human-caused global warming
hasn't happened *yet*" and are "purposely diverting the discussion
away from the actual concern over *future* dangers posed by humanity's
*continuing* greenhouse gas emissions."? I find it easy to believe that
their opponents claim that they say this, and hard to believe that they
have actually displayed the sort of behavior you described.
>I was writing about truth versus integrity, not warning about dangers.
>(Well, maybe I *was* warning about the dangers inherent in a lack of
>integrity. But I was not warning about *greenhouse warming* dangers.)
I apologize if I misunderstood. It sure seems to me that you were
pushing the Global Warming True Believer position, and still are.
Perhaps my perceptions are faulty.
I agree that there are cases in which people are truthful in a narrow,
literal sense, without displaying integrity. My problem is that you
have chosen as examples people who hold political positions that you
disagree with. This has the effect of conflating the general question
of inegrity with your politics. It would be the same if I commented on
the the general question of integrity using as my example the Global
Warming True Believers who only cite the data from surface stations
and ignore the temperature data from sattelites and weather baloons.
If I did that, would I be commenting on integrity or would I be scoring
a few points in favor of my position as a Global Warming Sceptic?
The answer is, A little of both.
Guy Macon
>
>You know, the biggest case of old-growth forest destruction in
>Colorado, and one of the biggest in the entire United States, is the
>ongoing clearcutting of the Taylor Ranch in San Luis County -- a huge
>expanse that was, before its destruction began, the southern anchor
>of what remains of the Front Range ecosystem.
>
> The Taylor Ranch is neither government property nor corporate
>property. It is private property, an entire 14,000-plus-foot-high
>peak of it with land all around below the peak -- owned by the
>Taylors, who are the descendants of the U.S. President of that same
>name. The Taylors (who themselves live in North Carolina, not
>Colorado) are clear-cutting that whole vast ranch in order to get a
>quick profit; and they are not replanting the land as it is cut but
>just abandoning it. Since it is in a dry, hot, semi-desert region,
>but the mountain itself gets heavy winter snows, as it is clear-cut,
>the topsoil that anchored the forest is being washed immediately away
>with the snowmelt, and the land is then turning to bare rock and
>desert. It is a total catastrophe.
>
> Colorado happens to be the only state in the Union that does
>*not* regulate timber-cutting on private land, so this catastrophe is
>being made possible precisely by the fact that we have some of the
>strongest private property rights in the nation.
[...]
> If we had allowed commons management of forested private land in
>San Luis County, Colorado, the local human community, living below the
>mountain in an area that is getting destroyed by flooding and silt
>from the clearcuts, was ready and eager to step in and enforce zoning
>laws that would have prevented the Taylor Ranch from being clear-cut
>in an irresponsible fashion. The community wanted to require
>selective cutting instead of clearcutting, and to require replanting
>in a similar variety of species to what classically existed there.
>
> However, the Taylor family is very Anglo and very rich, and the
>local community in San Luis County is very poor (the poorest in the
>state) and very Hispanic, and so the courts and legislature
>(both Republican-controlled and very ideological) decided to listen to
>the Taylors and not to the local human community, and refused to allow
>the local community to regulate the land effectively. And so it goes.
>
Treasure of La Sierra
By Karl Hess Jr. and Tom Wolf
Karl Hess Jr. and Tom Wolf are western writers and senior associates
of the Thoreau Institute.
One night in 1975, a hail of lead tore through Jack Taylor's home on
his ranch on the Rio Culebra, near the town of San Luis, just north
of the Colorado-New Mexico border. One bullet shattered his ankle.
Years later, arsonists set fire to his house; only a scorched chimney
remains today. More recently, protestors chained themselves to the
Taylor Ranch's gates and proclaimed a new war against logging on
private land. And earlier this year, Costilla County unsuccessfully
attempted to enjoin Jack's son Zack from logging even one more tree.
For a generation, the Taylor Ranch has been embroiled in what The New
York Times calls "the hottest environmental dispute in the Rockies."
It is a war for the ranch's resources, a battle between outsiders
from North Carolina and a long-established Hispanic community. The
stakes are high: herds of elk and bighorn sheep, millions of board-feet
of spruce and fir, and enough water to irrigate hundreds of square miles.
This isn't the only struggle over natural resources in the West. But
the Taylor Ranch is different: It's privately owned. While nearby
federal lands become the battlegrounds of intense wars over a shrinking
resource pie, the Taylors' innovative ranch is trying to use property
rights to make the resource pie bigger. If it succeeds, its owners will
be wealthier, its wildlife will be enriched, and its San Luis neighbors
will enjoy a windfall in forage, wood, elk, and water.
Taylor Ranch is the West writ small. It is a story about a beautiful
landscape: 77,500 acres of rampart-like alpine peaks, fields awash in
a rainbow of flowered colors, fingers of spruce-fir forests inching into
slopes of yellow and orange quaking aspen, and a lower fringe dressed in
pine and sagebrush. It's a tale made for re-thinking the role of property
in conservation, set in a Lockean landscape where rights are up for grabs.
It turns on a partial truth that Calvin Trillin stumbled on in an
unfriendly New Yorker piece he wrote about Taylor in 1976: A man
sometimes owns only the land his neighbors acknowledge he owns.
The story stretches back to 1843. Before then, the San Luis Valley was
home only to Indian tribes that constantly fought among themselves.
The valley was then part of Mexico, and this continual conflict suited
Mexican interests: It created a buffer zone between that country and
the region's other imperial aspirants. But in the 1840s, the Texans were
getting belligerent, and the Mexicans were getting nervous. To protect
its northern fringe, Mexico encouraged settlers to move from its
northernmost outpost--today's Taos, New Mexico--into the upper reaches
of the vast valley.
Charles Beaubien was a Frenchman and former fur trapper who became a
Mexican citizen and, in 1843, landlord of the Sangre de Cristo Land
Grant, over a million acres of unsurveyed land. The grant had a proviso:
Mexican law required it to be settled within two years. With Beaubien's
blessing, a few desperate pioneers started the fortified town of San
Luis de Culebra--and quickly abandoned it in the face of Indian attacks.
The grant thus remained unoccupied, casting the first of many clouds on
its title.
War reversed Beaubien's fortunes. The United States annexed Texas in
1845 and declared war on Mexico in 1846. In 1848, Mexico accepted the
lower Rio Grande as its boundary. The United States took over Mexico's
northern provinces; in return, Mexico received $15 million and was
relieved of all claims against it by American citizens. The United
States also agreed to honor Mexican citizens' claims.
Against this background, the ever-opportunistic Beaubien became an
American citizen. With the U.S. Army available to maintain order, he
reestablished San Luis in 1851; with Fort Massachusetts at the grant's
northern end, the settlement became permanent. Overnight, a market
appeared for San Luis' farmers and hunters, the fort got the food it
needed to survive, and a viable village was born. Hungry for a piece of
the new market, each Hispanic family in San Luis obtained title from
Beaubien to a small tract of irrigable land along the Rio Culebra. As
part of the deal, they assumed they had the customary communal right
to graze their herds, hunt, and cut wood in the ejido, the nearby hills
and mountains of the Rio Culebra watershed--an area that their descendants
would argue included the future Taylor Ranch.
In 1861, President Lincoln appointed William Gilpin as Colorado's first
territorial governor. Gilpin bought Beaubien's widow's share of the grant,
promising to honor title to the irrigated parcels given earlier to the
settlers at San Luis. Throughout the Civil War, Gilpin sold chunks of the
ejido to investors betting on a Union victory. He then split what remained
of the grant at the watershed boundary of the Rio Culebra, calling the
northern part (the part that lay outside the watershed) Trinchera. The
southern part went by the local name La Sierra--"the mountain tract."
Gilpin tried to sell La Sierra, but met staunch resistance from San
Luisans long dependent on free use of its land and resources. Buyers
were reluctant to invest in land whose title was colored by community
claims to its forage, water, wildlife, and wood. That title would remain
clouded for the next century. Trinchera was different: It had no history
of communal rights. It sold to a series of buyers, and in 1969 was
purchased by Malcolm Forbes.
By that time, Jack Taylor--former Golden Gloves champion, WWII fighter
pilot, and self-taught real estate entrepreneur--had come to Colorado.
Accustomed to seeking valuable land with clouded titles, Taylor set his
sights on La Sierra's timber and hunting potential. A group of Denver
businessmen sold it to him in 1960 for $500,000, or about $7 an acre. But
there was a catch. The deed specified that the lands of La Sierra were
"also subject to claims of the local people by prescription or otherwise
to rights to pasturage, wood, and lumber and so-called settlement rights
in, to, and upon said land."
The common-use rights laid out in the deed were remnants of Spanish and
Mexican law, largely at odds with Anglo-Saxon traditions. More important,
they were at odds with Jack Taylor's plans for the land. He went to
federal court, where in 1965 he won clear title to the place he renamed
the Taylor Ranch. But the controversy was just beginning. The civil
rights movement had arrived, and cries of Brown Power! echoed through
the Southwest. Across the region, Hispanics were laying claim to land
they felt was theirs. In 1981, a San Luis organization, the Land Rights
Council, sued to regain what it regarded as San Luisans' traditional
rights to La Sierra. The lawsuit, Rael v. Taylor, sought the outright
cession of the ranch to the plaintiffs, who claimed to be heirs of the
settlers of 1851.
Taylor's legal success was not matched by any talent for public
relations. When he first arrived, he fenced his property, barricaded
the roads, armed himself and his employees, and beat trespassers and
arsonists before hauling them into the Costilla County court. There he
found himself booked on assault and kidnapping charges. He was convicted
of minor assault and fined; the men he wanted charged went free. After
his brush with assassination in 1975, he rarely returned to his ranch,
where significant timber harvest and private big-game hunting took place,
along with chronic poaching and trespass. He died intestate in 1988.
His son and executor Zachary immediately put the ranch on the market,
in part to cover a loan to pay the crushing estate taxes. To enhance the
ranch's marketability, Zack adopted a more conciliatory attitude toward
traditional local uses of the land, leasing it for local grazing and
eventually opening it to free community fishing, hunting, picnicking, and
firewood collection. Unfortunately, the poaching and trespassing continued.
Even more damaging, his legal bills mounted, as Rael v. Taylor seesawed
between state and federal courts. The plaintiffs attracted pro bono
lawyers out of Denver, while the ACLU, the International Center for
Human Rights Litigation, and a score of others filed amicus briefs,
hoping to strike a blow for insurgent Hispanics and against resurgent
capitalists.
While Taylor duked it out in court in the 1970s and '80s, his neighbor
Forbes found a novel way to harness property rights to conservation and
improve community relations in the process. You can still find old-timers
in Costilla County who speak fondly of Forbes; some of Taylor's fiercest
opponents wear baseball caps that proclaim, "Forbes: Capitalist Tool."
Forbes' way of dealing with community problems was to hire locals at top
wages and integrate them into the operation of an increasingly successful
trophy-hunting ranch. That, in turn, was built on Colorado's Ranching for
Wildlife program, an innovation established by Forbes and his ranch
managers--the remarkable father-son team of Errol and Ty Ryland--in 1986.
Until that year, the 150,000-acre Trinchera Ranch was in decline. Cattle
weren't paying the bills; the only realistic option, it seemed, was to
subdivide the land into ranchettes. Nothing could match the glitter and
gold of real estate sales--nothing, that is, until the Rylands gave their
boss a money-making idea. Already committed to phase one of Trinchera's
subdivision, Forbes put a proposition before Colorado's game commission:
He would stop all subdivision on Trinchera for his fair share of the
licenses the state issued for hunting free-ranging elk. The game
commission said yes, but with one condition: Forbes would have to give
public hunters rights of access to his private lands during the general
hunting season.
In a state where the government had always owned the wildlife and where
game ranching for private purposes had been strictly forbidden, the
agreement was revolutionary. The plan, soon adopted by more than 30 of
Colorado's largest ranches, created a contingent private property right
in trophy big-game licenses. Participating landowners were given (with
their input) a biologically sustainable number of big game hunting
licenses. In exchange, they managed ranchlands for wildlife, not just
livestock, and shared a stick out of their bundle of property rights
with the hunting public.
Ranching for Wildlife is what keeps Trinchera intact today, just as it
keeps intact similar ranches. It also gives landowners an incentive for
good stewardship: The number of big game licenses landowners receive is
commensurate with the number of acres and the ecological quality of
their land.
The price is opening private land to limited hunting by the general
public during the regular hunting season. In the case of elk, the state
conducts a public lottery for 10 percent of the bull licenses, with
special breaks for local hunters in certain areas. For the price of a
$35 hunting license, ordinary people get a shot at the same trophy bulls
that ranch clients are paying up to 250 times more to shoot.
Nonetheless, the private licenses are valuable. Prior to Ranching for
Wildlife, private ranches hosted hunts, but not for the big dollars they
now earn. Before, they could charge prospective hunters fees to hunt on
private land, but they couldn't provide them with hunting seasons separate
from that of the general public, extended hunting seasons to suit their
schedules, or hunts at more optimal times when bagging a trophy animal
might be more likely. Also, landowners didn't control the number and
allocation of the licenses that would authorize hunters to hunt their
lands. This weakened their bargaining position. All that made it too
risky and unprofitable for landowners to develop recreational amenities
like those at Trinchera, which commands about $8,000 per elk hunt and
$50,000 per bighorn sheep hunt.
Under the new system, elk, cougars, bears, pronghorn, and bighorn sheep
are no longer just pests that prey on cattle or eat the grass cows need.
They are assets, earning landowners double or triple the dollar return
on cattle. This has made wildlands, not subdivisions, the most attractive
proposition in many parts of Colorado.
Indeed, Ranching for Wildlife has given ranchers incentives to
reintroduce wild species to their lands. Before the program, there were
no bighorn sheep in the Sangre de Cristos. Under the policy umbrella of
Ranching for Wildlife, Forbes was able to reintroduce the bighorn, steward
their health and numbers, and eventually receive the only authorized
licenses for bighorn hunting in that area. (This meant that landowners
who had not invested in the sheep's recovery could not ride free on
Forbes' success.)
Since 1986, Ranching for Wildlife has spread throughout Colorado, in
large part because both hunters and regulators realize its value in
keeping wildlife habitat intact. It came to the Taylor Ranch in the
early 1990s, bringing a financial boon for the Taylors, a conservation
boost for wildlife, and a chance for local hunters to attain a world
class hunt for the price of a dinner and a movie. Ranching for Wildlife
not only improved environmental conditions on the Taylor Ranch, it
helped stop poaching. Locals, whose poaching activities had, according
to Colorado's Division of Wildlife, seriously reduced the elk herd in
the 1980s, now had controlled but legal access to high-valued elk. For
the first time, the ranch's wildlife was paying its own way, a key point
for the estate tax-strapped Taylor family.
While Ranching for Wildlife was establishing itself on the Taylor Ranch,
endangered species lawsuits virtually shut down logging on western public
lands, driving timber prices from a low of $40 per thousand board-feet
in 1990 to more than $200 in 1994. Overnight, the ranch tripled in
value--a blessing that was tempered by tripled tax obligations and the
ever-escalating litigation costs of Rael v. Taylor. Federal and state
agencies made a series of buyout proposals, none of which took the change
in the land's value into account and all of which were rejected by the
Taylor family.
Faced with dead deals and mounting debt, Zack Taylor began in 1996 to
cut timber he had sold a few years earlier at top market prices.
Incensed by Taylor's brazen defiance of the community's claims to the
timber of La Sierra, the Land Rights Council ratcheted up its legal
assault. The more it sued, the more timber Taylor had to cut to pay his
legal bills; the more he cut, the louder grew the screams that he was
raping the land.
In an ill-fated move, the Land Rights Council sought support from the
fringe of the Anglo environmentalist movement. Soon, members of the
Boulder-based Ancient Forest Rescue were chaining themselves to the
Taylor Ranch gates, claiming that "the clearcutting of pristine
old-growth forests" was destroying a unique and valuable culture,
damaging the Rio Culebra watershed, and threatening an endangered
species. None of these claims turned out to be true, but anyone who
challenged them was branded as anti-environment and racist to boot.
In October 1997, Federal Judge Gaspar Perricone heard the latest version
of Rael v. Taylor in San Luis. He denied all class action claims and
ordered yet another trial to test the individual claims of a handful of
the remaining heirs of 1851. His subsequent decision not only denied
all claims to the ranch but reversed his 1997 decision to consider
individual claims. Except for a lingering and desperate appeal by the
Land Rights Council, Rael v. Taylor was over at last.
What is not over is the saga of the Taylor Ranch, and the promising
future it could offer the people of San Luis and the wildlife of
La Sierra.
For much of La Sierra's recent history, the high elevation spruce-fir
forests that ring Culebra Peak have been the grandest prize, and the
greatest bone of contention, among the parties warring over title to
the mountain tract. Jack Taylor clearcut sizable chunks of the ranch--up
to 500 acres in a single cut--in the 1970s. Evidence of those cuts
persists, and the likelihood of at least some damage to species and
watershed is almost certain. Zack Taylor is logging the ranch today,
albeit with a more benign strategy of select cuts that leaves the
spruce-fir forests visually and ecologically intact and the watershed
relatively unaffected. For his opponents, this amounts to rape and
plunder. They point to Culebra Peak and bemoan the disappearance of
presumed pristine and ancient stands of spruce and fir.
But La Sierra's forests are not virgin and they are not being plundered.
Most of the Culebra watershed burned to the ground in the late 1800s.
Both before and after those conflagrations, the people of San Luis cut
and hauled away a generous share of La Sierra's timber, just as Jack
Taylor felled his abundant share in the 1970s. Moreover, the current
timber practices on the Taylor Ranch meet the standard of best-management
practices, as the Colorado State Forest Service has testified. The
Culebra watershed is intact, the Rio Culebra runs clean and cold, and
the ranch's wildlife is healthy and diverse.
If Taylor is to be faulted, it is for the rate of his cut, a rate that
can only be sustained for a few years. Yet his decision to cut more now
and less later is not without cause. Besides his tax burden and the high
price for timber, there is the real chance that an endless stream of
lawsuits and protests might rob his family of the future benefits that
might accrue if he let the timber stand a few more years. That same
fear led Taylor to sell the southern end of the ranch in late 1998, a
move with far more negative ecological consequences than a simple
skimming of La Sierra's more robust trees.
But debate on the prudence and procedures of logging, however reasoned
and informed, still begs the larger point: The spruce-fir forests of La
Sierra are not the ranch's most valuable ecological or economic asset.
Less than 15 percent of the ranch contains commercial timber. The other
85 percent is made up of aspen woodlands, grassland, and low elevation
pine and sagebrush. These habitats, not the high elevation forests, are
what constitute and will sustain the long-term health of the Taylor Ranch.
It is here, not on the dark and sterile evergreen forest floors, that La
Sierra's wildlife resides. The future of the Taylor Ranch rests not in
its sparse forests, however valuable they may be for the moment, but in
its wild animals and the lucrative recreation they allow.
Ted Turner knows this. His Vermijo Ranch, in New Mexico, borders La
Sierra on the south; he has pioneered the practice of turning wildlife
and recreation into both big profits and big dividends for the environment.
Malcolm Forbes knew it, and his sons know it now; Trinchera is a refuge for
wilderness because hunters, and attendees at the Forbes conference center,
will pay for it. Zack Taylor is just now beginning to see it, especially
as the burden of lawsuits and protests recedes.
Ironically, the greatest environmental damage now occurring on the
Taylor Ranch has nothing to do with cutting trees and everything to do
with the one communal use of the land that has persisted over the years:
cattle grazing.
Long before Jack Taylor's tenure, the tradition of open access grazing
had taken its toll on the health of the Culebra watershed. William deBuys,
the region's most respected environmental historian, is unequivocal on
this: "The old ways, while generous to humans, were exceedingly hard on
the land. Neither the ejido nor the cultivated [irrigated] tracts
received any rest [from livestock] except when they were buried under
snow...." (This legacy of devastation is never decried by Ancient Forest
Rescue or the Land Rights Council, whose eyes are fixed on the trees of
La Sierra.)
DOW's Ranching for Wildlife review team blames the historic condition
of the ranch on intensive stock grazing through the first three-quarters
of the century, a period that largely predates the arrival of the Taylor
family. That grazing degraded rangelands, dried up streams, and accelerated
erosion. The better part of Zack Taylor's Ranching for Wildlife contract is
an agreement to restore the abused rangelands. Last year Taylor eased back
on that obligation, allowing Hispanic farmers hurt by a drought to graze
more livestock than they should have. Because of this overgrazing--not
logging--DOW barred Taylor from Ranching for Wildlife, effective this
fall. He can re-enter the program when he takes action to restore and
protect his rangelands, so vital for elk in the winter, from the impact
of cattle.
Taylor's suspension from Ranching for Wildlife is a blow to conservation
on La Sierra and a blow to the San Luisans who benefit from legal hunting
on the ranch. But it is also one last chance to end the property rights
conflict that has divided La Sierra between private and communal interests
for 50 years. A bold new plan could transform the Taylor Ranch into a
model of private conservation across the West and, at the same time,
give substance and form to the San Luisans' moral, if not legal, claims
to a share of the forage, water, wood, and wildlife resources of La
Sierra.
In March 1999, conservationists, scientists, and landowners from
southern Africa and the western United States met at Forbes' ranch to
discuss private responsibility for private land stewardship. The
gathering was hosted by the Thoreau Institute and the Sand County
Foundation; its attendees included Zack Taylor and the authors of
this essay.
The chemistry was unique. Across from us sat farmers from southern
Zimbabwe who had joined with their neighbors to set up the Bubiana
Conservancy, a wildlife cooperative dedicated to the private management
of animals ranging from rhino to elephant to cape buffalo. Taylor, a
neophyte to wildlife conservation, listened to them intently. These
farmers were committed to conservation; against all obstacles, including
a Marxist state hungrily eyeing their lands, they were fighting for
private wilderness and private wildlife. Taylor, too, faced expropriation,
but the conservation daring of these Zimbabwean environmentalists was
something new, unsettling, yet ultimately alluring.
After that meeting, Taylor was more willing to consider a plan--first
suggested months earlier by the authors of this essay--that would
reconcile private property rights with historic communal uses, and would
do so through the transforming power of the marketplace. Similar to the
African initiatives, the plan would turn the Taylor Ranch into a resource
bank for both its owners and its neighbors. The bank would provide a
continuous flow of resource benefits to San Luisans. Those benefits would
then contribute to the profit-making wildlife and timber ventures of the
Taylor family.
The Ranching for Wildlife program would be expanded, on a voluntary
basis, to embrace the valley bottom farms that border the Taylor Ranch
and that contain the elk winter range that the ranch now lacks.
Currently, those farms grow grass to feed cattle in winter. Yet the
value of those cattle when fed on winter hay is only a fraction of the
economic value of elk when raised on the same forage, uncut and unbaled.
By adding small parcels of former haylands to La Sierra's expansive
summer upland ranges, the total number of available elk licenses in
Taylor's Ranching for Wildlife contract would increase significantly.
The Taylor family would earn more revenue, the small farms would more
than double their profits from their valley meadows, and enough cash
would be left over to buy local hay to sustain their displaced cattle
for the winter.
During the summer, cattle grazing would continue on the Taylor Ranch,
but with two big differences. First, there would no longer be a grazing
fee. Second, in return for the free grass, community stockmen would
assume responsibility for 1) protecting sensitive areas, such as
wetlands, from the adverse effects of cattle; 2) stopping the cattle
from trespassing and overgrazing; and 3) herding and holding their
livestock in key areas where the stock's activities would help wildlife.
(Local Hispanic farmers are already organizing, at their own initiative,
a stockmen's association to regulate grazing on La Sierra and to help
Taylor meet his obligations to Ranching for Wildlife.)
Community rights would also be hitched to the fate of the ranch's timber
and water resources. First, the resource bank would keep sustainable
logging alive on the Taylor Ranch, benefiting both the Taylors and the
villagers. The bank would give logging rights to San Luisans in
small-diameter spruce-fir thinnings and 5- to 15-acre aspen patch cuts.
The harvest would then be processed locally to produce lucrative
value-added products, such as molding. The thinned forests would
accelerate the growth of commercial timber while opening the forest
floor to sunlight and more plants for wildlife. Small aspen clearcuts
would rejuvenate decadent and dying aspen stands while creating ideal
summer grasslands for elk. Everyone would gain: The Taylor Ranch and
surrounding farmlands would have more elk to hunt; the Taylor family
could harvest more timber, sooner; and the local community could build
a thriving industry.
Second, and possibly most important, the community's thinning and
patch-cutting could be designed to retain more snow in the forest and
to optimize how much of it melts into the watershed in the summer.
The irrigation waters below the ranch could then run cleaner and longer,
benefiting local farmers. Further up the watershed, proper timber
management would spur on the already growing population of beavers,
the keystone species for sustaining the highly productive wetlands so
essential to a broad array of plant and animal life.
It's too early to tell if the resource bank will work, or even if all
the players in La Sierra's future will embrace its benefits, its
responsibilities, and its challenges to conventional thinking. But
this much is certain. The mountain land stretching from Turner's
Vermijo Ranch to the Forbes property and beyond is private. And each
of those properties is an island of conservation hope in a grim sea
of failed federal management.
The weak link in the string of private pearls is the Taylor Ranch,
mostly by dint of its contested title. But if those rights can be
adjudicated by informal means, the string will be complete and secure.
A private wildland of vast proportions will find a long-sought niche
in the federally owned West. And as Americans debate the future of
public lands and federal wilderness, the solitary bay of the first
privately reintroduced gray wolf will echo across a landscape
carved in love and profit by the capitalist tools of Turner, Taylor,
and Forbes.
Mike
> works -- a form that seems to have *historically* protected land much
> better than any other known -- is community management by the
> immediately local community: what is called commons management. And
> it works regardless of whether the land is privately held, corporately
> held, or governmentally held.
>
I am gratified to learn that community management is a viable solution,
since that conforms to my view that local control in general is better than
centralized government.
The subsequent post by Guy Macon indicates that commons management in San
Luis County is taking place. It would seem that much of your information is
out of date or comes from highly biased and/or partisan sources.
> However, the Taylor family is very Anglo and very rich, and the
> local community in San Luis County is very poor (the poorest in the
> state) and very Hispanic, and so the courts and legislature
> (both Republican-controlled and very ideological) decided to listen to
> the Taylors and not to the local human community, and refused to allow
> the local community to regulate the land effectively. And so it goes.
>
This sounds a lot like racism and bigotry. I am disappointed.
>
>
> rn> Marshall, I understand that you want to protect those
> >> creatures. But those creatures have no rights in human
> >> society.
>
> They have rights in God's world, and any person or society that
> ignores those rights must answer for it to God.
>
Animals have no rights in man's world or in God's world. It is in our
interest to consrve certain aspects of the ecology, but only because it is
for our own long term benefit. Bears used to roam freely in Britain when
that country was sparsely populated. They could not be allowed to come back
to their old haunts because it would be very dangerous to people, and as far
as I am concerned the safety of people is far more important than supposed
"rights" of animals.
Michael
Russell Nelson
> > Have you ever thought that statements like this are so full of
> stereotype that it makes it difficult to see through them and into any
> unbiased sincere and honest perspective?
No, actually, I never have. The term "stereotype" doesn't apply. A
stereotypical politician is "white male aged 50-60". A description of
a politician is "Someone with the ability to get [re-]elected." If a
politician doesn't get re-elected, it doesn't matter what are his
long-term plans. Everything a politician does is tempered by his
ability to get re-elected. So (for example) even if the military
acknowledges that it doesn't need a particular base, the local
politician must do his all to keep that base open, otherwise he won't
get re-elected.
Can you see the difference between a stereotype and a description? A
stereotypical black is a watermelon-eating fried-chicken loving lazy
boy (at least if you're to believe Archie Bunker). A description of a
black is someone descended from an African.
> > in protecting the interests of their grandchildren) will plant the
> > hardwood forest.
> *****
> Perhaps you have exmples?
Bill MacKently has planted a field full of black walnuts. My
next-door neighbor has spent enough time improving his land that the
difference between my land (left to grow back on its own) and his is
visible from aerial photos.
> What is the honest reason that you
> hang on to your acreage?
If you continually see dishonesty in other people, perhaps you should
look in a mirror for the cause.
Very well, if you want an honest reason, the reason I bought it is to
protect it from development. That's the same reason I gave earlier,
so I don't see how it's any more honest than then.
Russell Nelson
> However, I certainly do not disagree with your observation that
> it's not just corporations. It's in fact just a variation on an age-
> old *human* problem of short-sightedness.
You could call it that. A less judgemental term is "inability to
predict the future." Because the future is uncertain, people discount
the likelihood of anticipated or unanticipated events occurring.
> rn> The only good solution to the problem you pose is strong
> >> property rights and low property taxes. Individuals (who
> >> *do* have an interest in protecting the interests of their
> >> grandchildren) will plant the hardwood forest.
>
> You know, the biggest case of old-growth forest destruction in
> Colorado, and one of the biggest in the entire United States, is the
> ongoing clearcutting of the Taylor Ranch in San Luis County -- a huge
> expanse that was, before its destruction began, the southern anchor
> of what remains of the Front Range ecosystem.
I couldn't argue that this isn't happening. But are the Taylor's
property rights indeed strong? Are they threatened by any Federal
environmental legislation? What about inheritance taxes? What about
property taxes?
> In fact, there is no form of ownership (or of not-ownership
> either) that can prevent abuse by short-sighted human beings.
Sure. But there are forms of ownership which can make the problem
worse.
> But the closest thing to a form of land *management* that really
> works -- a form that seems to have *historically* protected land much
> better than any other known -- is community management by the
> immediately local community: what is called commons management. And
> it works regardless of whether the land is privately held, corporately
> held, or governmentally held.
What matters is that the people making the decisions about the
resource expect to be able to reap the rewards. If you have a
situation which causes a transfer in control, you can reasonably
expect the people currently in control to do what they have to do to
keep control, even if that means destroying some or even most of the
resource.
> rn> Marshall, I understand that you want to protect those
> >> creatures. But those creatures have no rights in human
> >> society.
>
> They have rights in God's world, and any person or society that
> ignores those rights must answer for it to God.
What you say does not dispute what I say. Did you mean it to? :-)
Russell Nelson
> But the climate models you refer to only *exist* because there is a
> concern about *future* dangers posed by humanity's *continuing*
> emissions.
They can't even predict today's temperatures. How can they predict
future warming? Or cooling for that matter. The same people
promoting global warming used to global cooling alarmists. What has
stayed the same is the desire for attention (and yes, research money)
which is satisified by alarmism. Later on, when their alarmism proves
to be false witness, they say "Well, the bad thing didn't happen
because we called attention to it, so we can be excused for not
telling the truth."
> mm> -- And I think of all the games played with fine print
> >> and weasel words in manipulative legal documents
> >> everywhere!
>
> rn> I've read a LOT of legal documents, running a business as
> >> I do. Most of them are not manipulative, and the terms
> >> in the fine print do not attempt to mislead.
>
> [etc.]
>
> As far as that goes, my experience matches yours. *Most* legal
> documents *are* simply intended to make business easier.
Ahhhhh, I see. You merely meant that legal documents with unexpected
terms in the fine print are easily found. I agree they are, and
they're easily avoided too. They can be identified by being too good
to be true. People who fall for them are trying to get something for
nothing. If they find out later that they didn't, isn't that simple
justice at work?
> But IMHO that does not excuse the manipulative ones, and the
> manipulative ones *are* indeed everywhere. Just for example, start
> with all those offers you get for credit cards with low introductory
> terms (but exploitive terms elsewhere in the contract, literally in
> fine print).
How can people, free to sign or not sign a contract, be said to be
exploited by contract terms?
Dennis White
I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that you can not see your own prejudices
and seek to turn the tables on anyone who questions you. Why impugn my
honesty by asking me to look into a mirror. Why not speak openly and
honestly and call me a liar or a dishonest scoundrel because I chose to
challenge your belief that all politicians think only of their re-election?
That is such a stale view....one that does no one any good in actually
working toward change, rather than just complaining.
Dennis
"Russell Nelson" <nel...@crynwr.com> wrote in message
news:m2n1655...@desk.crynwr.com...
Marshall Massey
gm> Treasure of La Sierra
>>
>> By Karl Hess Jr. and Tom Wolf
>>
>> Karl Hess Jr. and Tom Wolf are western writers and senior
>> associates of the Thoreau Institute.
Interestingly enough, there are at least two Thoreau Institutes. One,
located near Walden Pond in Massachusetts, is dedicated to the study
of Thoreau and hosts Thoreau memorabilia. The other, in Oak Grove,
Oregon, is one of them right-wing think tanks, far enough to the
right to have an article on its web site praising the salvage logging
rider (http://ti.org/sa18.html).
It was the latter Thoreau Institute from which Guy obtained this
article.
As the article notes, the relations of the Taylor Ranch with the
local community have been fiery, to say the least, ever since the
Taylors bought it in 1960. I myself have been interested in the
matter since 1973, when I moved to Colorado and discovered that our
AFSC had a literacy project going in San Luis. In 1998, after hearing
an appeal from environmentalists concerning the logging situation down
there, I visited San Luis County and stayed several days in the local
Catholic church's B&B, meeting and talking with local folks in all
walks of life, seeking to learn.
The article Guy has posted appears to me to get its history right
until the point where it describes the modern Zachary Taylor coming
into his inheritance. But from that point it departs from
truthfulness.
It asserts that Zachary Taylor "adopted a more conciliatory
attitude toward traditional local uses of the land, leasing it for
local grazing and eventually opening it to free community fishing,
hunting, picnicking, and firewood collection. Unfortunately, the
poaching and trespassing continued." Can anyone here imagine how
poaching and trespassing could have happened in a place that was open
to free community fishing, hunting, etc.? In fact, poaching and
trespassing can only be defined as such if the land is *not* open.
The unhappy truth is that, at least a year and a half before I visited
San Luis, and it may have been much earlier than that, Zachary Taylor
had given his ranch hands orders to shoot anyone they found
trespassing -- indeed, to shoot to kill. This was an order he could
give with impunity because, under our state's infamous "Make My Day
Law", the person who kills a trespasser cannot be prosecuted in court
for it.
The article then tells us how Zachary Taylor's legal bills
mounted, and how the ACLU et al. all ganged up on poor Taylor. It
doesn't mention that Taylor was able to afford a small army of paid
lawyers and lobbyists in Dever, which overwhelmed the small deputation
that was all San Luis County and the ACLU could afford -- the result
being that Taylor won and San Luis lost on every point, both in the
Colorado Supreme Court and on Denver's Capitol Hill.
The Federal and State buyout proposals came a little later.
According to the legal experts I've talked to, and to representatives
I corresponded with in former Governor Romer's office, these were
offers based on current market value for such real estate. What the
Taylor family was holding out for, instead, was a sum roughly equal to
all the money it hoped to raise by clear-cutting the entire mountain
while spending nothing on replanting. Our utterly Republican
legislature was not willing to authorize such a sum.
The Taylor family's argument that they had to keep cutting more
timber to pay their legal bills is pretty silly: they could have
settled amicably with the people of San Luis County instead and come
out way ahead financially. But in any case, their financial straits
are no excuse for the kind of ecological damage they have been doing.
Ancient Forest Rescue's claims are all documentably true. The
*acequias* -- passive irrigation canals -- *are* being destroyed by
silt. The farmers whose canals they are getting destructive floods in
spring and then no water at all to keep their crops alive through the
heat of the summer, so that they can no longer farm and are being
forced to abandon their lands. And this ancient settlement -- the
oldest by far in Colorado, and one of the very last surviving examples
of Spanish-style low-tech, environmentally-gentle living anywhere in
the United States -- is indeed being destroyed. I have seen this with
my own eyes.
Contrary to what the article implies, no one claims that the
forests which the Taylor family is destroying are virgin. And again
contrary to what the article implies, the local community's logging
was never destructive in the way the Taylor family's logging has been
destructive. The Taylor family has been doing *massive* clearcuts --
320 acres to 480 acres is one-half to three-quarters of a square mile,
on land that typically slopes 20 to 30 degrees and therefore erodes
like sugar in the rain. The locals did small-patch cutting, far less
destructive.
The article's statement that "the Culebra watershed is intact,
the Rio Culebra runs clean and cold" is a falsehood -- as may be
readily deduced from the article's own third-from-the-end paragraph.
The watershed is damaged, the river runs full of silt in spring, and
many of its tributaries no longer run at all in summer.
The claim that "the ranch's wildlife is healthy and diverse" is
disingenuous: there is less habitat left (the mountain is now more
than half logged, according to locals who were carefully avoiding
exaggerations and misstatements as they spoke with me), and the region
therefore can support far fewer animals of each species.
The article's claim that the timber cutting still going on
"meet[s] the standard of best-management practices, as the Colorado
State Forest Service has testified," is disingenuous too, because
with half the tree cover already gone, the mountain simply cannot
afford further deforestation. As the article says, "the rate of his
cut ... can only be sustained for a few years." This is because it
took only a few years to remove half the timber at that rate, and at
that rate it will take only a few more to remove all the rest.
The article's argument that cattle grazing is more destructive
than logging is debatable. Like most Western environmentalists, I am
fully convinced that the grazing of cattle in our region is enormously
destructive, but it is difficult to say which of the two practices is
more destructive for the simple reason that the two sorts of damage
are of different kinds. In any case, the existence of one evil should
not be used to excuse another.
The article's claim that "Taylor ... faced expropriation" is an
outright falsehood. Our Republican state government would *never*
exercise eminent domain to take his land away from him, no matter how
richly he deserves it (and he does deserve it, in the same sense that
a drunken, reckless driver deserves to have his driver's license taken
away). And the Federal government has never taken any interest in the
case -- nor does it have the political strength to take Taylor's land
away, even if it were interested in doing so. Any Federal
administration that tried to do such a thing would be made to pay
heavily nationwide at the next elections.
The article's assertion that "The mountain land stretching from
Turner's Vermijo Ranch to the Forbes property and beyond is private.
And each of those properties is an island of conservation hope in a
grim sea of failed federal management," ignores the obvious fact that
none of the federal properties in the region have been maltreated to
anywhere near the degree that the private-property Taylor Ranch has
been.
So: lots of dishonesty here. And a real lack of integrity, of
the very sort I was talking about when I first brought up the timber
industry's behavior in this thread.
We may hope that the current scheme works -- certainly, as the
article claims, it would bring about some improvements. But the fact
that the Taylor family will still be logging is inexcusable, given the
degree of damage that has already been done. And, both from an
ecological standpoint and from a sustainable-agriculture standpoint,
there is an urgent need to reforest what has been cut and to take
drastic (and very expensive) steps to halt erosion and restore the
soils in the damaged areas. And the plan, of course, does not offer
to do either thing.
Russell Nelson
> I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that you can not see your own prejudices
> and seek to turn the tables on anyone who questions you.
I think you don't understand the difference between a stereotype and a
description. A stereotype is something that people think is a
description, but isn't. Any politician who doesn't worry about
getting elected won't get elected, and then of course they won't be a
politician anymore. A stereotypical politician is a corrupt windbag.
Some are, of course -- all stereotypes are based on an example of
people in the class. Yes, there *are* Jewish American Princesses.
Yes, there are tightfisted Jewish businessmen. Doesn't mean that all
are -- just that some are. On the other hand, there's something you
can always tell about Jews -- they're Jewish.
> Why impugn my honesty by asking me to look into a mirror.
Because you impugned mine by asking me to answer a question honestly,
as if I had not answered it earlier. Obviously you didn't take the
time to look in the mirror otherwise you would have seen what you
wrote for what it was.
Marshall Massey
mm> -- I think of how representatives of American big
>> business answer the concern over global warming by
>> arguing that human-caused global warming hasn't
>> happened *yet* -- purposely diverting the discussion
>> away from the actual concern over *future* dangers
>> posed by humanity's *continuing* greenhouse gas
>> emissions.
Guy Macon responded,
gm> I think that this is a straw man argument. Most of the
>> opponents to the policies that the Global Warming True
>> Believers call for say (with good reason) that what the
>> Global Warming True Believers say will happen will not
>> happen.
I replied,
mm> But I was not talking about "most of the opponents to the
>> policies". I was talking about a *specific group of
>> opponents* who have displayed the sort of behavior I
>> described.
Guy responds,
gm> My apologies for missing that.
Apologies accepted, naturally. This is the sort of misunderstanding
that is all too easy in e-mail. We clear up our misunderstandings and
move on.
gm> Would you care to name a couple of this specific group of
>> opponents so that I can confirm that thay "answer the
>> concern over global warming by arguing that human-caused
>> global warming hasn't happened *yet*" and are "purposely
>> diverting the discussion away from the actual concern
>> over *future* dangers posed by humanity's *continuing*
>> greenhouse gas emissions."?
Thank you, but no. My past experience with this sort of conversation
is that if I offer examples, we wind up picking over details
endlessly, quarreling over who is in the right and whether the accused
is guilty or not, and consuming (wasting!) lots of time. I am
currently working three simultaneous jobs in order to keep up with my
family's bills, so I just don't have time for that sort of debate. My
apologies for disappointing you.
gm> I find it easy to believe that their opponents claim that
>> they say this, and hard to believe that they have
>> actually displayed the sort of behavior you described.
I don't know if "their opponents" have made such a claim or not. *I*
have made such a claim, and the blame for it (if any) should fall on
my head, not anyone else's.
I also wrote,
mm> I was writing about truth versus integrity, not warning
>> about dangers. (Well, maybe I *was* warning about the
>> dangers inherent in a lack of integrity. But I was not
>> warning about *greenhouse warming* dangers.)
To which Guy responds,
gm> I apologize if I misunderstood. It sure seems to me that
>> you were pushing the Global Warming True Believer
>> position, and still are. Perhaps my perceptions are
>> faulty.
I don't know. I actually don't know what you mean by "the Global
Warming True Believer position". I have my own opinions, arrived at
by my own thinking about the subject, but I don't know if they match
the position you refer to.
What I believe is that the build-up of greenhouse gases -- CO2,
methane, gaseous chlorocarbons, etc. -- is dangerous, wrong, and a sin
in the classic meaning of the term. I believe this in the same way I
believe that firing a gun at people is dangerous, wrong, and a sin.
The sinfulness of the thing, in each case, it seems to me, does not
depend on whether injury actually ensues. It has to do rather with
our willingness to endanger the other.
It seems to me that we are called by Christ, not to calculate
risks and aim for the main chance of profit, but simply to practice
selfless love. If we practice selfless love for people, we will not
fire guns at them. And if we practice selfless love for all the
living beings on Earth (people and otherwise), we will not fire a
massive greenhouse gas build-up, on a scale unprecedented since the
Pliocene, at them.
gm> I agree that there are cases in which people are truthful
>> in a narrow, literal sense, without displaying integrity.
>> My problem is that you have chosen as examples people who
>> hold political positions that you disagree with. This
>> has the effect of conflating the general question of
>> inegrity with your politics.
Goodness, Guy! -- don't you think that my disagreement with their
political positions has anything to do with my perception of their
lack of integrity?
Perhaps you noticed that Bill Clinton, an idol of the liberal
left, was on my list of people criticized, alongside the industry
apologists for greenhouse gas emissions? Obviously, I wasn't
criticizing Clinton because he was on the left, any more than I was
criticizing the industry apologists because they were (mostly) on the
right: I was criticizing both of them because they dealt with others
in ways that lacked integrity.
And as for the misleading and manipulative contracts that I
criticized, were they on the political left or on the political right?
How can I know? But my problem with them has to do with their
misleadingness and their manipulativeness, not with their politics.
Marshall Massey
mf> I am gratified to learn that community management is a
>> viable solution, since that conforms to my view that
>> local control in general is better than centralized
>> government.
The interesting thing about commons management is that the
circumstances lead the people involved to ask themselves, "What is
best for all of us?" -- and then to proceed accordingly. This is
comparable to the process of Quaker discernment: it is an intimate
group seeking after righteousness together. It is not just any old
kind of local government.
mf> The subsequent post by Guy Macon indicates that commons
>> management in San Luis County is taking place.
How I wish. See my reply to Guy, please. Things do seem to be moving
in that direction, but the San Luis situation is not yet at the point
of true commons management. The Taylor family -- which is not local
at all, but absentee -- is still making take-it-or-leave-it proposals
to the local community, rather than sitting down and having a
conversation with them as people who belong to the local community and
are vulnerable to the community's judgment, as true commons management
would require.
mf> It would seem that much of your information is out of date....
My information includes reports as recent as early in this present
year, 2001.
mf> ...or comes from highly biased and/or partisan sources.
Alas, there are no unbiased and unpartisan sources. The situation is
extremely polarized, to the point where each side has repeatedly tried
to kill the other. However, I have been on the spot, right there in
San Luis County, and have spent many days both there and in Denver
investigating the details of the situation. I think that puts me in a
fairly good position to see past the biases on either side.
mf> This sounds a lot like racism and bigotry.
There is a lot of anti-Hispanic prejudice among Colorado Anglos, and
the Anglos still hold the dominant position, both politically and
economically, in this state.
I have been repeatedly asked by San Luis residents whether I
thought the Colorado Supreme Court and the Colorado legislature would
still have been as unreceptive to their pleas, had they been
prosperous middle-class Anglos instead of dirt-poor Colorado Spanish.
In honesty, I have had to answer: No, I don't think so.
mf> Animals have no rights in man's world or in God's world.
Animals have rights in American secular society on the statutory
level, though not on the constitutional level. These rights are
granted to individual animals by our anti-cruelty laws, and to species
by the Endangered Species Act.
It is true that animals cannot enforce these rights on their own
behalf, but that only means they lack standing, not that they lack
rights. The exact same thing can be said of comatose humans and
newborn babies: they lack standing (they cannot institute a lawsuit
on their own behalf) but they do not lack rights.
As for God's world -- well, what does your heart tell you when
you hear of a person who let his little pet puppy die of neglect, of
lack of food and water, all alone? What would it say to you about
yourself, if you were to do such a thing yourself?
Dennis White
Russells words:
"Even worse, politicians horizon maxes out at the next election...."
I contend that not all politician's horizons max out at the next
election. I believe some seek elected office seeking to change things for
the better. I also believe some think it appropriate to serve only one
term. I believe Russell has unfairly painted everyone from local
school-board members to The President because he is in disagreement with the
American system. Therefore he throws mud at everyone. I call it
stereotyping to say that all politician's horizon max out at the next
election. He believes it is a description. I believe he means that to be
an "accurate description".
My question to Russell:
"Have you ever thought that statements like this are so full of
stereotype that it makes it difficult to see through them and into any
unbiased sincere and honest perspective"?
Mine was a question....not an accusation. His answer is that I need to
look into a mirror. Obviously Russell thinks that by asking him a question
or challenging his perspective means one is dishonest. I wonder if Russell
has any regard whatsoever for anyone who willfully chooses to have a
differing set of beliefs than his?
"Russell Nelson" <nel...@crynwr.com> wrote in message
news:m2elrg5...@desk.crynwr.com...
Wakefield
snip
>
> What matters is that the people making the decisions about the
> resource expect to be able to reap the rewards. If you have a
> situation which causes a transfer in control, you can reasonably
> expect the people currently in control to do what they have to do to
> keep control, even if that means destroying some or even most of the
> resource.
>
snip
Do you really believe that-say- the majority of people- or perhaps we
should include corporations in this as well- believe and act this way? I
don't see it. Many hostile takeovers occur in business, many people are
forced by exigencies to give up positions of control. There are not many
stories of destruction such as you imply. I think you give a view of people
as 'dog in the manger' mentalities that most manage to transcend. Can you
give some examples of people 'destroying some or even most' of the resources
they were attempting to retain within their control as that control was
leaving them? I just haven't seen it. Most will keep the resource in good
shape to make the best of the transfer.
Maybe it's different if they control but don't own. But again, outgoing
CEOs don't usually totally trash the place. They want to maintain their rep
for effective management so they can go on to the next job.
--
-- L Wakefield, owner and operator of the beastly truck heretik, that
refuses to stay between the lines when parking --
Marshall Massey
mm> ...I certainly do not disagree with your observation that
>> it's not just corporations. It's in fact just a
>> variation on an age-old *human* problem of short-
>> sightedness.
Russ Nelson writes,
rn> You could call it that. A less judgemental term is
>> "inability to predict the future." Because the future is
>> uncertain, people discount the likelihood of anticipated
>> or unanticipated events occurring.
Future developments, good and bad, can very often be easily foreseen,
as Christ himself reminds the Pharisees in the Gospels. But people
often refuse to recognize the "signs of the times" that are right in
front of their noses -- usually because they have a vested interest in
some ideological *status quo*. (Matthew 16:1-4)
IMHO, the tree-plantation issue is an example of this same
problem at the present time. The future is not *really* unforeseeable
-- signs of the times are present, as e.g. in blights afflicting the
plantations of the South -- but there are ideological convictions
about that are addling some people's minds. As Christ said: those
who have ears, let them hear.
rn> But are the Taylors' property rights indeed strong?
The Colorado Supreme Court and legislature have seen to it that their
rights are unshakeable.
rn> Are they threatened by any Federal environmental
>> legislation?
No. But why would such a threat justify their clear-cutting the
mountain in any case?
rn> What about inheritance taxes? What about property taxes?
Other wealthy families manage to keep their wealth and pass it on
without destroying their portion of the planet in order to do so --
the Walls, of Wal-Mart fame, for example. Or the Kennedys.
I am sure the Taylors could manage to do the same.
rn> What matters is that the people making the decisions
>> about the resource expect to be able to reap the
>> rewards. If you have a situation which causes a transfer
>> in control, you can reasonably expect the people
>> currently in control to do what they have to do to keep
>> control, even if that means destroying some or even most
>> of the resource.
Most people manage to be mature enough not to do that. They allow
their land to be zoned for the good of the community, they do not
fight the zoning (when it is clearly for the good of the community)
even if it deprives them of some possible forms of future profit, and
they even vote for the re-election of the folks who did the zoning.
They do these things because they identify with a larger community
than just their own selves, and they rejoice to see that larger
community turn out well.
Malcom Forbes, at least as regards his Trinchera Ranch just north
of the Taylor Ranch, is a case in point. He not only accepts but
positively embraces the limitations which environmentalists and the
local community declare are good for the land and the future
community. He works with those limitations, and he finds ways to turn
them to advantage. The San Luis County citizens I talked with praised
him for his attitude; of course, they were unhappy that he was
developing his land, but they were resigned to the fact as an
inevitability, and they were glad that it was at least being done
responsibly and with consideration for the people and the land.
But the Taylors, like many members of the wise-use crowd, are
members of a minority who do not behave in such a way. Instead of
learning to play by the rules to win, they fight against the rules to
their own self-destruction as well as the destruction of those around
them. It is very sad.
rn> Marshall, I understand that you want to protect those
>> creatures. But those creatures have no rights in human
>> society.
mm> They have rights in God's world, and any person or
>> society that ignores those rights must answer for it to
>> God.
rn> What you say does not dispute what I say. Did you mean
>> it to?
I wanted to point out that for Friends, the issue is not human rules
but God's direction. In point of fact, non-human creatures *do* have
rights in human society, which are given them by such things as anti-
animal-cruelty laws and the Endangered Species Act. But the bottom
line for Friends has not historically been, "What does the law say?";
Friends do try to respect the law, but the real issue for them has
always been, "What does God say?"
Marshall Massey
mm> ...The climate models you refer to only *exist* because
>> there is a concern about *future* dangers posed by
>> humanity's *continuing* emissions.
Russ Nelson responds,
rn> They can't even predict today's temperatures. How can
>> they predict future warming?
The concern about global warming is not based on the models, but on
more general grounds.
Let us use woolen blankets on your bed as an analogy for the
"greenhouse gas" blanket enclosing the earth. The additional
greenhouse gases generated by the human race in the past 10,000 years
-- and particularly in the past 200 years -- may be compared to
additional blankets thrown on your bed. It is a reasonable assumption
that such additional blankets will make you warmer when you sleep
underneath them. Most people *do* accept that blankets have this
effect. And if you doubt that it is true, try sleeping under woolen
blankets on an already-hot summer night, and see what happens!
But now we get to a most particular case. Last night you had two
more blankets on the bed than the night before -- those are the
additional greenhouse gases generated since 1800 A.D. -- and your body
tells you that you were indeed warmer -- that is the global average
temperature at the surface, which global warming apologists point to.
But thermometers you left on the side of the bed where you *didn't*
sleep showed *cooler* temperatures under the blankets than the night
before -- those being the satellite measurements that skeptics point
to. And besides, the window was closed, unlike the night before --
that's the change in solar activity that skeptics also bring up.
Well, now, I suppose we could debate all day whether your sense
of additional warmth *in that particular case* was real or an
illusion; whether it was caused by the blanket or by the closed window
or by your body heat or by some other factor.
But none of this touches the more *general* principle that
blankets do make people warmer. And that more general principle is
where the basic concern here is grounded.
rn> Ahhhhh, I see. You merely meant that legal documents
>> with unexpected terms in the fine print are easily
>> found. I agree they are, and they're easily avoided
>> too. They can be identified by being too good to be
>> true. People who fall for them are trying to get
>> something for nothing. If they find out later that they
>> didn't, isn't that simple justice at work?
Ahhhhh, I see. You merely meant that people exist to be taken
advantage of. One does not need to practice integrity in the presence
of the foolish. As Calvin (the Calvin of comic-strip fame, not Guy
Macon's guru) once said, *Caveat emptor* is the motto *our* business
stands behind!
But Christ was not that way. He condemned those who swore by the
hair of their heads, etc., in order to take advantage of the gullible
(Matthew 5:36).
We Friends have long felt that Christ was in the right in this
matter. And so we became famous for being so careful not to take
advantage of anyone, that a mere child could come into any one of our
shops and make a purchase, and receive a fair price and a fair deal.
rn> How can people, free to sign or not sign a contract, be
>> said to be exploited by contract terms?
If they sign it without realizing what the contract terms imply, they
are "exploited" in the sense of "being taken advantage of" (meaning #2
in my Merriam-Webster dictionary for "exploit"). The exploiter takes
advantage of their mistake in signing the contract without carefully
reading and fully grasping the implications of the fine print.
And this in turn leads to "exploitation" in the third sense of
"exploit" given by my dictionary: "to make use of meanly or unjustly
for one's own advantage <e.g., *exploiting* the peasants with long
hours and abysmally low wages>".
Such exploitation, in both senses, is wrong because there are
things you just should not do to a person, even if the victim gives
you an opening to do so by making a mistake in your favor.
That is why (for example) Friends have long condemned the
infamous "walking purchase" in Pennsylvania -- which they were *not*
responsible for, by the way, but which they have sometimes been
accused of having had a hand in. The "walking purchase" was a
contract, and it was one that the Indians agreed to freely; but it was
an exploitive contract in that it took advantage of the Indians by
means of a trick that the Indians did not think the anyone would be
dishonorable enough to play. And it was furthermore an exploitive
contract in that it enabled the (non-Quaker) whites who proposed it to
make use of the Indians meanly and unjustly for their own advantage.
Mike
Wakefield <her...@loa.com> wrote in message
news:9j1j4n$e6d$1...@nntpsp2-ld.pvd.loa.net...
>
> Do you really believe that-say- the majority of people- or perhaps we
> should include corporations in this as well- believe and act this way? I
> don't see it. Many hostile takeovers occur in business, many people are
> forced by exigencies to give up positions of control. There are not many
> stories of destruction such as you imply. I think you give a view of
people
> as 'dog in the manger' mentalities that most manage to transcend. Can you
> give some examples of people 'destroying some or even most' of the
resources
> they were attempting to retain within their control as that control was
> leaving them? I just haven't seen it. Most will keep the resource in good
> shape to make the best of the transfer.
I think it is common practice for companies that are threatened by takover
to use the "poison pill" strategy, which is basically to make their company
relatively worthless and not attractive for takeover. One way is to go into
debt.
> Maybe it's different if they control but don't own. But again, outgoing
> CEOs don't usually totally trash the place. They want to maintain their
rep
> for effective management so they can go on to the next job.
> --
Outgoing CEOs will use strategies that give short term profits at the
expense of long term value to make their tenure look better than it is. C.
Michael Armstrong, as CEO of Hughes Aircraft Corp., sold all of the desktop
computers and software used in the companies' offices (about 50-60 thousand
employees) to another company and then leased them all back with a service
contract. This gave him a big pile of cash that made his balance sheet look
wonderful but was a great expense and headache for the company over the long
term.
Another example is how Clinton tightened restrictions on arsenic in drinking
water a few days before leaving office to a level that was not possible in
the real world. This bit of trashing had no other purpose than to make Bush
look bad for loosening restrictions on arsenic, which anyone would have been
forced to do. It was really a pretty clever ploy. Almost as clever as going
to Europe and pretending that the US favored the Kyoto treaty when the
Senate hade already voted it down 95 to 0.
Dennis White
"Guy Macon" <_@_._> wrote in message
news:tlaf1v6...@corp.supernews.com...
> Dennis White wrote:
> >
> >Russell,
> >I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that you can not see your own
prejudices
>
You are blind.
>
> >and seek to turn the tables on anyone who questions you.
>
> I don't see that either. I see honest, well thought out answers
> that you seem unable to accept as answers, even as wrong answers.
>
> >Why impugn my honesty by asking me to look into a mirror.
>
> Please look in the mirror. It was you who used the phrase
> " What is the honest reason". That implies that the previous
> answer was dishonest. Russell has flaws like we all do, but
> being dishonest isn't one of them.
There wasn't a previous answer. I simply asked, for the first time, the
honest reason to own property....I asked Russell to look into himself and
ask honestly. If you wish to turn that around, so be it. That was not my
intention, whichever way you choose to interpret it.
>
> > Why not speak openly and honestly and call me a liar or a dishonest
> > scoundrel
>
> You made the implication of dishonesty where there seemed to be
> none. I don't know your motives, but the two most common are
> that someone has the trait that they accuse others of, and learned
> debating tricks that worked well on one's parents. That doesn't mean
> that you fit in either box, but those are the most common reasons why
> someone iuses somewhat insuling phrases such as "What is the honest
> reason". I also have to admit that "look in the mirror" is also a
somewhat
> insuling phrase...
>
> > because I chose to challenge your belief that all politicians think only
of
> >their re-election?
Russel stated in a post what I challenged him about. I am not a
mind-reader.
>
> Are you a mind reader? Why not *ASK* him what his beliefs are?
He already told me. Perhaps you missed the post.
>
> >That is such a stale view
>
> Yet it is indeed accurate, for the same reason that olympic athletes think
only
> of their physivcal condition and skills. It's not that someone who
spends 16
> hours per day in the study of Chess isn't allowed to be a Olympic sprinter
> or someone who puts other things above getting elected isn't allowed to be
> a politician but rather that in both cases they lose the competition to be
an
> elected politician or a member of the olympic team to someone who is more
> focused on attaining that goal.
I don't think we need to bring Chess and Olympic sprinters into the
argument. Russell says he believes "politician's horizon maxes out at the
next election (sic)". This is not roundly true, and I believe it is a stale
view to believe it and stereotypical to state it. I am aware of many good,
honest people who have sought office with a sincere desire to serve their
communities and promote their idea of good government. The majority of
elected officials in this country are hard-working, down-to-earth folk. I'm
sick of hearing them all lumped together, spoken of without any
individuality and routinely criticised because some of us don't believe in
the same system of government that they honestly believe in. If government
has problems I believe it is better to seek real change rather than
continue complaining and bad-mouthing simple concerned citizens who wish to
contribute to society. Of course some are bad eggs. But I believe the
majority to be truly involved in their communities and posess a desire to do
good.
>
> This has been explained to you before.
>
> >....one that does no one any good in actually working toward change,
> >rather than just complaining.
>
> Wrong. It is the knowledge that politicuams think only of their
re-election
> that caused us to put in term limits and various other controls.
Is the "us"Libertarians and no one else? What other controls? Your rather
vague here.
Dennis
>
>
Dennis White
One correction, although not a disagreement with the overall message here.
Clinton sought to enact restrictions on arsenic levels that are established
by the World Health Organization as acceptable. They are goals the WHO
would like to see met world-wide.
Dennis
"Mike" <meflyn...@homeNOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:00b57.5236$A47.3...@news1.rsm1.occa.home.com...
Dennis White
Perhaps I'm missing the point.....what do you mean when you refer to
Hollywood Blvd.? That friends may think it glamorous instead of the
horrible and sad place it actually is? Or that it is not nearly as bad as
it is made out to be? No argument...just curious.
Dennis
"Guy Macon" <_@_._> wrote in message
news:tlagfi3...@corp.supernews.com...
> Marshall Massey wrote:
>
> >The Taylor family -- which is not local at all, but absentee
>
> Is this an example of a misleading detail? They are absentee because
> their opponents were *shooting* at them when they were local.
>
> >-- is still making take-it-or-leave-it proposals to the local community,
rather
> >than sitting down and having a conversation with them as people who
> >belong to the local community and are vulnerable to the community's
> >judgment, as true commons management would require.
>
> That's because it isn't a commons. The Taylor family owns it. They don't
> have to make any proposals to the local community (most of whom own their
> own land and presumably don't let the Taylors tell them what to do with
it.
>
> >Alas, there are no unbiased and unpartisan sources. The situation is
> >extremely polarized, to the point where each side has repeatedly tried
> >to kill the other. However, I have been on the spot, right there in
> >San Luis County, and have spent many days both there and in Denver
> >investigating the details of the situation. I think that puts me in a
> >fairly good position to see past the biases on either side.
>
> I disagree. I am fairly confident that I could go there and come to a
quite
> different conclusion, based on the obvious fact that we are both biased
> in different directions. Indeed, many members of the local Libertarian
> Party have been on-site there and found that the situation they saw
matched
> what they believed before arriving. And I am sure that I could send a
> hundred greenpeace members and they would find that the situation they
> saw matched what they believed before arriving.
>
> (There is an environment that will change people's minds, and that's
Compton
> and Watts here In Los Angeles. I invite any Friend who visits LA to let
me know
> and I will take them on a tour of those places and of Hollywood Blvd.)
>
>
>
Dennis White
"Guy Macon" <_@_._> wrote in message
> dishonesty. Have you convinced yourself in your mind that all you did was
> to ask a question? If so, please re-examine that belief, for it is not
based
> on reality.
I asked him a question.
>
Richard Stamper
> Marshall Massey wrote:
>
> >To which Guy responds,
> >
> > gm> I apologize if I misunderstood. It sure seems to me that
> > >> you were pushing the Global Warming True Believer
> > >> position, and still are. Perhaps my perceptions are
> > >> faulty.
> >
> >I don't know. I actually don't know what you mean by "the Global
> >Warming True Believer position". I have my own opinions, arrived at
> >by my own thinking about the subject, but I don't know if they match
> >the position you refer to.
> >
> > What I believe is that the build-up of greenhouse gases -- CO2,
> >methane, gaseous chlorocarbons, etc. -- is dangerous, wrong, and a sin
> >in the classic meaning of the term. I believe this in the same way I
> >believe that firing a gun at people is dangerous, wrong, and a sin.
> >The sinfulness of the thing, in each case, it seems to me, does not
> >depend on whether injury actually ensues. It has to do rather with
> >our willingness to endanger the other.
>
> Your own opinions, arrived at by your own thinking about the subject,
> match those of the Global Warming True Believers point by point.
> I seriously doubt that you arrived at the conclusion that Human CO2 is
> warming the globe by just thinking about it. I think someone told you.
And similarly, since your opinions on the subject match those of the big oil
companies you, too, are an easily led sap. Glad that's all square then.
>
> > It seems to me that we are called by Christ, not to calculate
> >risks and aim for the main chance of profit, but simply to practice
> >selfless love. If we practice selfless love for people, we will not
> >fire guns at them. And if we practice selfless love for all the
> >living beings on Earth (people and otherwise), we will not fire a
> >massive greenhouse gas build-up, on a scale unprecedented since the
> >Pliocene, at them.
>
> It seems to me that we are called by Christ, not to ignore risks
> and aim for the main chance of political correctness, but simply to
> practice selfless love. If we practice selfless love for people, we will not
> fire cannons at them. And if we practice selfless love for all the
> living beings on Earth (people and otherwise), we will not fire a
> massive ice age that covers the entire glob and kills all but a few
> single celled organizms at them.
>
The web reference you posted recently on the 'Snowball Earth' theory was very
interesting. Doubly interesting was the fact that in it the authors stated
that on timescales of hundreds of years anthropogenic global warming was the
major concern, and the next remote possibility of the nowball earth scenario
would be around the peak of the next ice age in 80,000 years. They also
hypothesise that the snowball scenario is only possible when there were no
landmasses at the poles, so a repeat also depended on plate tectonics
significantly altering the arrangement of the continents.
A massive ice age eliminating all but a few single celled organisms would be a
terrible thing, but the prospect of that in several million years alarms me
rather less than the prospect of significant anthropogenic climate change in
the next few hundred.
> Now tell me how to decide between your statement and mine
> without calculating risks.
Snowball Earth? Disastrous scenario, very remote, easy to counteract (just
bang out lots of C02 and methane). Anthropogenic global warming? Unpleasant,
very close, difficult to counteract (change the energy basis of the world
economy). Seems to me we should worry about the second more than the first at
present.
Cheers,
--
Richard Stamper
Richard Stamper
> Marshall Massey wrote:
>
> >The concern about global warming is not based on the models, but on
> >more general grounds.
Big snip.
>
> O.K. You tried to explain it, and convinced me only that either you
> haven't bothered to read http://www.john-daly.com/ or that you
> rejected it for religious reasons. I say this because most of your
> arguments are addressed on that web page.
>
> Now let me try to explain it...
>
Another big snip.
Guy, there is little point in posting reams of figures from John Daly. Anyone
can go and consult the voluminous literature on climate change and post
equally plausible seeming numbers ad nauseam.
I am sure you would agree that we do not understand the climate system
properly. I presume you would also agree that atmospheric C02 concentrations
have increased. You have seen the Vostok ice core data showing the close
correspondence between temperature and atmospheric CO2 over the last 400,000
years, through three complete ice age cycles? During that period C02
concentrations never went outside the range 180-300 ppm. It is now at over
360 ppm. Does it not concern you that such a key component of the climate
system is now outside the bounds that the system has sat in for so long
(in human terms)?
Cheers,
--
Richard Stamper
Forrest Parkinson
>Date: 7/18/01 4:43 AM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <tqk7kx6...@wdcc1k.bnsc.rl.ac.uk>
>Snowball Earth? Disastrous scenario, very remote, easy to counteract (just
>bang out lots of C02 and methane). Anthropogenic global warming?
>Unpleasant,
>very close, difficult to counteract (change the energy basis of the world
>economy). Seems to me we should worry about the second more than the first
>at
>present.
>
>Cheers,
>
>--
>Richard Stamper
A few years ago I read something about a test patch of Pacific Ocean being
fertilized with iron oxide creating huge plumes of life that proceeded to sink
to the depths, effectively locking up gobs of carbon, and suggesting a
potential method for reducing the atmospheric CO2 levels.
Has anything more come of this line of research?
Peace, friends,
Forrest Parkinson
on Long Island
The water a cow laps becomes milk. The water a snake sips becomes venom.
- Anonymous
Mike
when you ask someone to "give me your honest answer" it is an insult,
especially in a Quaker context where honesty is supposed to be such a sacred
part of everyday commerce that to be asked to take an oath is an insult. But
it is a mild insult that could be mentioned once and then forgotten. It may
not have been a conscious insult, just a normal expression of a naturally
combative personality, which seems to be common among the Quakers of this
NG, with a few exceptions. It has always fascinated me that people who call
themselves Friends and who do act friendly on a corporate level,
nevertheless are not as friendly as the average Joe in personal one-on-one
relationships.
Allow me to summarise the gist of the issue:
A: I am right and you are wrong.
B: No, I am right and you are wrong.
Thank you for a moment of levity.
Michael
Dennis White <denn...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:nnb57.369358$p33.7...@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com...
Mike
However I do note the definite partisanship and bias to one side that you
show. Some of your statements have led me to suspect that you may be a
follower of the Sierra Club party line on logging.
I happened to find a Sierra Club magazine in a lobby that was dedicated
to the issue of salvage logging. I found it to be written in the hysterical
tone of extremely partisan propaganda. They do not say so directly, but I
take it that they would oppose the cutting down of any tree for any purpose.
There was an article on how the faithful could build a home without using
lumber. Apparently timber is not considered by them as a renewable resource,
so they will be opposed to any logging, and it does not matter what the
circumstances are. When people of this agenda scream about clearcut logging,
I really wonder if that is the issue.
When there are such polarised and ruthless (shooting at Taylor and
burning his house down) partisans at work, it is really hard to know the
truth, because you know that you cannot rely on what people tell you. Yes, a
whole community can work together to pull the wool over the eyes of
strangers. The refugees of Kosovo did it too us to manipulate US policy. It
is an old Western tradition to tell tall tales to strangers, with a straight
face and brag about who is the best at it.
Michael
Marshall Massey <mma...@earthwitness.org> wrote in message
news:giablt4ah3gsi88s0...@4ax.com...
> I wrote,
>
> mm> The Taylor family -- which is not local at all, but
> >> absentee....
>
> Guy responds,
>
> gm> Is this an example of a misleading detail? They are
> >> absentee because their opponents were *shooting* at them
> >> when they were local.
>
> No, they are absentee because they are absentee. Their roots are in
> North Carolina, and those are strong roots indeed, as you might
> imagine of an aristocratic Southern clan whose wealth and power have
> endured for two centuries in one place. They're not about to change
> their primary residence.
>
> Jack Taylor never seems to have intended to have a full-time home
> on the mountain; he had a cabin, built for occasional recreational
> use, and he used it only as an occasional residence, up to the time
> some local or locals burned it down.
>
>
>
> mm> -- is still making take-it-or-leave-it proposals to the
> >> local community, rather than sitting down and having a
> >> conversation with them as people who belong to the local
> >> community and are vulnerable to the community's judgment,
> >> as true commons management would require.
>
> gm> That's because it isn't a commons. The Taylor family
> >> owns it. They don't have to make any proposals to the
> >> local community (most of whom own their own land and
> >> presumably don't let the Taylors tell them what to do
> >> with it.
>
> I see two issues here.
>
> The first is the question of whether the land was a commons. It
> was clearly understood to be a commons by Beaubien (the original
> holder of the grant) and by the settlers he brought in. Furthermore,
> this was not just an idiosyncrasy on their parts; this was legal and
> expected under Spanish law, which still prevailed in that area at
> that time. Subsequent holders of the grant, too, understood that the
> land was a commons, and accepted that fact *in writing* in their deeds
> of purchase.
>
> Jack Taylor took it upon himself to end that state of affairs;
> and he did so unilaterally, without approval from any other parties
> to the former arrangement. This was a classic act of enclosure,
> identical to those done by English rural landlords against English
> villagers in the 17th century. (It might interest you to know that
> Friends bore witness against those acts of enclosure in the 17th
> century, as being unjust.) The courts have upheld the Taylors in this
> matter, but the Colorado Spanish of San Luis County continue to feel
> that it is an injustice. And so do I.
>
> Then the second issue. Where land is private, and not a commons,
> you seem to feel that what the owner does with it should be entirely
> his own decision and not subject to any sort of local community
> control. If he wants to pour cyanide into the water table, and
> thereby poison his neighbors' wells (which happens in modern gold
> mining operations here in the West), nobody should have any right to
> stop him. If he wants to strip-mine or clear-cut his mountain and
> thereby destroy everybody else's water supply (as the Taylors have
> been doing), nobody should have any right to stop him.
>
> This may be your belief, but it is not how commons management
> operates. Nor is it how U.S. law operates. Zoning, for example, is
> legal and customary in this country, and is frequently used as a way
> of the local community limiting what landowners can do with their
> lands. Also, in every state of the Union other than Colorado, there
> are laws restricting logging practices on private land, and in those
> other states, those laws are enforced.
>
> If the Taylors had no choice but to live full-time locally, they
> would have to face the fact that their actions are rendering their own
> land uninhabitable even for themselves -- and they would have to
> suffer the consequences. That in itself would be a good thing, a
> powerful incentive not to abuse the land as they have done. They
> would also have to face the anger of all the thousands of San Luis
> County residents they have injured -- which would be a powerful
> incentive to act with an awareness of responsibility to their
> neighbors. (The responsibility toward one's neighbors is one of the
> two great commandments in our religion, you will recall.)
>
> Contrary to what you assert, in such a case, the Taylors would
> have the same say in how their neighbors treat their lands as their
> neighbors have in how the Taylors treat theirs -- that is, the say of
> individuals in the community, who have one vote each during the years
> of their majority, and who have weight in community deliberations
> according to the respect and influence that others grant them. Of
> course, they would have to earn their share of respect -- something
> they have *not* been doing up to now -- but their wealth would assure
> them influence.
>
>
>
> gm> I am fairly confident that I could go there and come to a
> >> quite different conclusion, based on the obvious fact
> >> that we are both biased in different directions.
>
> Please do so. I have been inviting, even begging, Friends to visit
> this area and get involved, for years and years, all in vain. I will
> be happy to take my chances on your conclusions.
>
> gm> Indeed, many members of the local Libertarian Party have
> >> been on-site there and found that the situation they saw
> >> matched what they believed before arriving.
>
> Local to you or local to where? And what did they believe before
> arriving, regarding the clear-cuts and the impact of the clear-cuts?
>
> gm> And I am sure that I could send a hundred greenpeace
> >> members and they would find that the situation they saw
> >> matched what they believed before arriving.
>
> Greenpeace came down from Boulder, did a one-day demonstration in
> front of the Taylor Ranch in which they took great care to ensure that
> they would not get arrested, and then climbed back on their bus and
> went home. In the opinion of the San Luis County locals, they
> accomplished nothing worthwhile at all -- although their organizer
> gave himself lots of credit when he talked about their demonstration
> to the press. Several people I talked with in San Luis County were
> ready to dismiss the Greenpeace folks as total asses because of this
> one incident.
>
> Certainly, the Greenpeace people never bothered to investigate
> the situation in any depth in person before they did their
> demonstration, let alone commit themselves to a continuing two-way
> relationship where they might be changed by what they encountered.
> But I have tried not to make that mistake myself. And I hope your
> Libertarians also did not make that mistake.
Dennis White
Dennis
"Mike" <meflyn...@homeNOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:qbr57.6484$A47.4...@news1.rsm1.occa.home.com...
Dennis White
You seem to have a point. A word of caution, however. The facts are
still being gathered and the jury is still out on what took place in Kosova.
It is far easier for us to be skeptical from a distance. I am not partisan
in any of the Balkan conflicts that occured in the last decade and a
half....I just want to see justice and peace come to all living there. I
really urge you, and others to subscribe to one of the truly most
magnificent on-line jounals I have read....Transitions On Line. I have
mentioned it here many times. It is an independent, thoughtful and
cutting-edge publication that covers events and opinion in the former Soviet
bloc, as well as an entire section devoted to the Balkans. You can sign up
for a free trial membership at:
http://www.tol.cz/look/TOLnew/section.tplIdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssu
e=6&NrSection=10
Dennis
"Mike" <meflyn...@homeNOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:SGr57.6813$A47.4...@news1.rsm1.occa.home.com...
Guy
Marshall Massey wrote:
>
>To which Guy responds,
>
> gm> I apologize if I misunderstood. It sure seems to me that
> >> you were pushing the Global Warming True Believer
> >> position, and still are. Perhaps my perceptions are
> >> faulty.
>
>I don't know. I actually don't know what you mean by "the Global
>Warming True Believer position". I have my own opinions, arrived at
>by my own thinking about the subject, but I don't know if they match
>the position you refer to.
So far, your stated opinions track those of the Global Warming True
Believers point by point.
> What I believe is that the build-up of greenhouse gases -- CO2,
>methane, gaseous chlorocarbons, etc. -- is dangerous, wrong, and a sin
>in the classic meaning of the term. I believe this in the same way I
>believe that firing a gun at people is dangerous, wrong, and a sin.
>The sinfulness of the thing, in each case, it seems to me, does not
>depend on whether injury actually ensues. It has to do rather with
>our willingness to endanger the other.
Then you are a sinner. I say that because I believe is that the build-up
of greenhouse gases -- CO2, methane, gaseous chlorocarbons, etc
-- is beneficial and right, and that your opposition to them is dangerous,
wrong, and a sin in the classic meaning of the term. I believe this in
the same way I believe that firing a cannon at people is dangerous,
wrong, and a sin. Will you now repent of this sin you are commiting?
> It seems to me that we are called by Christ, not to calculate
>risks and aim for the main chance of profit, but simply to practice
>selfless love. If we practice selfless love for people, we will not
>fire guns at them. And if we practice selfless love for all the
>living beings on Earth (people and otherwise), we will not fire a
>massive greenhouse gas build-up, on a scale unprecedented since the
>Pliocene, at them.
It seems to me that you are called by Christ not to ignore risks
and aim for the main chance of political favor from your fellow
enviromentalist liberals, but simply to practice selfless love.
If we practice selfless love for people, we will not fire cannons
at them. And if we practice selfless love for all the living beings
on Earth (people and otherwise), we will not fire a massive ice
age that will destroy all life exceot for a few bacteria at them.
How will you decide which of the above two paragraphs are
correct if you refuse to calculate risks?
You are taking an incredable, foolhardy, and dangerous risk by
ingoring the clear warnings that the present warming trend has
already started to reverse and plunge us into an ice-age. I call
on you to accept this as true without evidence, just as you have
asked me to accept without evidence that man's CO2 is causing
psychic global warming. (I say Psychic because the warming started
long before the CO2 was released.)
So, will you repent of your sins now, or will you keep engangering us all?
Richard Stamper
> You are taking an incredable, foolhardy, and dangerous risk by
> ingoring the clear warnings that the present warming trend has
> already started to reverse and plunge us into an ice-age. I call
Unless human activity or some other unknown factor has changed the climate
system significantly, then an ice age is not possible with current levels of
atmospheric CO2.
> on you to accept this as true without evidence, just as you have
> asked me to accept without evidence that man's CO2 is causing
> psychic global warming. (I say Psychic because the warming started
> long before the CO2 was released.)
>
No one, except the strawman you are busily knocking down, disputes that there
are natural causes of climate change. The present understanding of climate
change attributes almost all pre-1900 warming to natural causes, and a
substantial part of pre-1950 warming to natural causes. The warming in the
second half of the 20th century cannot be accounted for solely by natural
causes. Talking about 'the warming' or quoting figures looking at all warming
since the mid 19th century is therefore misleading.
For a statement of the current scientific understanding see the IPCC report
'Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis - Technical Summary' at
http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/wg1TARtechsum.pdf
Cheers,
--
Richard Stamper
Guy Macon
Richard Stamper wrote:
>Guy, there is little point in posting reams of figures from John Daly. Anyone
>can go and consult the voluminous literature on climate change and post
>equally plausible seeming numbers ad nauseam.
It appears that Marshall Massey has not done so and will not do so.
His arguments are very well covered on the John Daly web page. You
seem to be hitting the weak points in the sceptics' argument, but Marshall
seems to be trying to hit the strong points, presumably because he isn't
familiar with them. If you were the only one participating I wouldn't
do so much quoting, but it's the only way to get Marshall to pass his eyes
over the evidence.
>I am sure you would agree that we do not understand the climate system
>properly.
Agreed 100%.
>I presume you would also agree that atmospheric C02 concentrations
>have increased.
I will assume that you mean in the last few decades and will agree.
In the long run, we are rather low on C02 compared to historical
highs, but those were a *long* time ago.
I presume that you will agree that in the last few decades the
globe got warmer many years before the CO2 increased.
>You have seen the Vostok ice core data showing the close
>correspondence between temperature and atmospheric CO2 over
>the last 400,000 years, through three complete ice age cycles?
I just happen to have the actual data from the Russian Vostok
station in East Antarctica right here on my hard disk. Key
quote: "the present-day levels of CO2 are unprecedented
during the past 420 kyr".
I want you to carefully read the last 32 words of the summary:
They are an important clue.
Historical carbon dioxide record from the Vostok ice core
J.M. Barnola, D. Raynaud, C. Lorius
Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Géophysique de l'Environnement,
CNRS, BP96, 38402 Saint Martin d'Heres Cedex, France
N.I. Barkov
Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, Beringa Street 38,
199397, St. Petersburg, Russia
Period of Record: 414,085-2,342 years BP
METHODS
There is a close correlation between Antarctic temperature and
atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (Barnola et al. 1987). The
extension of the Vostok CO2 record shows that the main trends
of CO2 are similar for each glacial cycle. Major transitions
from the lowest to the highest values are associated with
glacial-interglacial transitions. During these transitions,
the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 rises from 180 to 280-300
ppmv (Petit et al. 1999). The extension of the Vostok CO2
record shows the present-day levels of CO2 are unprecedented
during the past 420 kyr. Pre-industrial Holocene levels (~280
ppmv) are found during all interglacials, with the highest
values (~300 ppmv) found approximately 323 kyr BP. When the
Vostok ice core data were compared with other ice core data
(Delmas et al. 1980; Neftel et al. 1982) for the past 30,000
- 40,000 years, good agreement was found between the records:
all show low CO2 values [~200 parts per million by volume
(ppmv)] during the Last Glacial Maximum and increased
atmospheric CO2 concentrations associated with the
glacial-Holocene transition. According to Barnola et al.
(1991) and Petit et al. (1999) these measurements indicate
that, at the beginning of the deglaciations, the CO2 increase
either was in phase or lagged by less than ~1000 years with
respect to the Antarctic temperature, whereas it clearly
lagged behind the temperature at the onset of the glaciations.
Did you get that last part?
Has it occured to you that ice ages reduce the amount of
plants, and plants reduce CO2 levels?
How do you tell which is cause and which is effect?
The way you tell is by seeing what lags and what leads.
***THE CO2 CHANGE LAGS BEHIND THE TEMPERATURE CHANGE!!!!***
Let me repeat that again (shouting)
***THE CO2 CHANGE LAGS BEHIND THE TEMPERATURE CHANGE!!!!***
Let me quote the scientists who took the data:
"these measurements indicate that, at the beginning of
the deglaciations, the CO2 increase either was in phase
or lagged by less than ~1000 years with respect to the
Antarctic temperature, whereas it clearly lagged behind
the temperature at the onset of the glaciations."
This means that either the temperature change causes
the CO2 change, or some third factor causes both.
You are smart. Think it through. Effects do nor precede causes.
>During that period C02
>concentrations never went outside the range 180-300 ppm. It is now at over
>360 ppm. Does it not concern you that such a key component of the climate
>system is now outside the bounds that the system has sat in for so long
>(in human terms)?
So? It has exceeded that range in the past, and we know pretty much what
the climate was like during those periods. Why does it matter how long ago?
Before global warming started 18,000 years ago most of the earth was a
frozen and arid wasteland. Over half of earth's surface was covered by
glaciers or extreme desert. Forests were rare. Not a very fun place to live.
Global warming over the last 15,000 years has changed our world from an ice
box to a garden. Today extreme deserts and glaciers have largely given way
to grasslands, woodlands, and forests. I wish it could last forever.
I would like to see more of the same. I *like* forests and grasslands.
YEARS AGO CO2 ppm
1 365
10 357
100 298
1,000 279
10,000 259
100,000 229
1,000,000 200
10,000,000 500
250,000,000 2,000
300,000,000 350
500,000,000 10,000
4,500,000,000 1,000,000
In very general terms, long-term reconstructions of atmospheric
CO2 levels depict a gradual rising back in time to approximately
five times earth's current concentration at about 220 million
years ago, followed by a dip back to near-current levels between
250 and 350 million years ago, with a rise to perhaps 20 times
today's concentration between 450 and 550 million years ago.
Beyond that point in time, the CO2 content of the air is generally
portrayed as rising all the way to a full bar of presure
(1,000,000 ppm) at 4.5 billion years ago.
Guy Macon
>
> mm> The unhappy truth is that, at least a year and a half
> >> before I visited San Luis, and it may have been much
> >> earlier than that, Zachary Taylor had given his ranch
> >> hands orders to shoot anyone they found trespassing --
> >> indeed, to shoot to kill. This was an order he could
> >> give with impunity because, under our state's infamous
> >> "Make My Day Law", the person who kills a trespasser
> >> cannot be prosecuted in court for it.
>
>
>It's unclear to me which the two statements you quoted you are asking
>for evidence of. As regards the "shoot to kill" order, I was warned
>of it by multiple sources who were clearly worried I would try
>something rash during my investigatory visit and thereby get myself
>killed. I do not believe they were in collusion to foist a falsehood
>on me; in fact, had the danger not existed, *some* of them would
>clearly have been much happier had I entered the ranch and viewed up
>close what the Taylors had been doing, instead of just examining
>aerial photographs.
I see. Both claims could be true. He may allow locals to graze, hunt
fish, etc without charge and still shoot people like you who are not locals.
>
> gm> My BS detector just went off. ACLU has plenty of
> >> resources in all of the other disputes it gets into - why
> >> would this one be different?
>
>It does *not* have plenty of resources in all the other disputes it
>gets into. It turns down many requests each year because of lack of
>resources, and in the cases it does take on, it invests much more
>heavily in some than in others. It is a well-heeled organization,
>truly, but its concerns are much bigger than its purse.
Excellent point, and I stand corrected. Clearly the ACLU has enough
things it wants to do that 100 ACLUs couldn't do them all, and clearly
it has to pick some issues to spend big bucks on, others to go at on
a shoestring budget, and others to not pursue at all. I will never
again assume that ACLU involvment means lots of cash. Thanks.
I always like it when I learn something that helps me to better
understand various situations.
>I used to be involved with the ACLU myself, twenty years ago
>when I was going through my own (fortunately brief) libertarian phase.
>I broke my connection with it when I learned that its libertarian
>principles were leading it to file suits on behalf of individual
>Indians against their tribal governments -- suits where I personally
>thought the individuals were in the wrong -- further weakening tribal
>strength and solidarity.
From "What a Libertarian Is - and Is Not" by Sam Wells
http://www.laissez-fairerepublic.com/libertar.htm
Libertarians are not to be confused with the so-called "civil
libertarians" which typify the membership and leadership of the
American Civil Liberties Union. It is true that the ACLU has
come to the defense of freedom of speech for certain minorities
(e.g., nazis, communists, and anarchists) and this is commendable
- but the podium has often been at taxpayers' expense, which is
a "no-no" from the real libertarian perspective. Many "civil
libertarians" believe that some people have a "right" to violate
the rights of others; they claim there is a "right to a job" or
a "right" to welfare payments or a "right" to "free education"
or a "right" to free child care - all at the expense of the
people (usually the taxpayers) who are forced to pay for these
so-called "rights." Real libertarians are for true freedom,
not "freedom" at the forced expense of others. The only
obligation that true rights impose on persons is of a negative
kind: not to interfere with the rights of other people - i.e.,
to refrain from the initiation of the use of coercion. This
is the core principle of libertarianism and is sometimes
called the 'Non-Aggression Axiom'.
Welfare-state "liberals" and "civil libertarians" speak of
"rights" of people as members of specially privileged groups,
such as "women's rights" or "gay rights" or "rights of the
handicapped" or even so-called "animal rights"! Real libertarians
know that there are only individual rights, not group rights.
here is no such thing as "gay rights" or "black rights" or
"white rights" or left-handed Martian rights. Government must
not be used to dish out special privileges to any group for any
reason, since government cannot give anyone anything unless it
takes it away from others by force, thereby violating their rights.
There can be no such thing as a "right" to violate the rights
of others.
No doubt there are some well-intentioned ACLU members who
do promote true civil liberties and uphold human rights; however,
the ACLU has not come to the defense of the rights of school
children whose freedom is being violated daily by compulsory
attendance laws and the tyranny of Federally-ordered forced busing.
Nor do I know of any case in which the ACLU has defended the
constitutional rights of businessmen who are being harassed by
OSHA agents and other bureaucrats, or hounded by such arbitrary
and subjective laws as the antitrust acts. Indeed, many "civil
libertarians" seem callously insensitive to the victims of crime
and legal plunder - while they defend known criminals from justice.
Because of their consistent adherence to the principle of individual
rights, libertarians are the only true defenders of liberty -- civil
or otherwise. Real libertarians understand that freedom of speech
and other civil liberties depend on the sanctity of private property
- not its violation by anti-discrimination laws and other forms of
government intervention.
Guy Macon
> Then the second issue. Where land is private, and not a commons,
>you seem to feel that what the owner does with it should be entirely
>his own decision and not subject to any sort of local community
>control. If he wants to pour cyanide into the water table, and
>thereby poison his neighbors' wells (which happens in modern gold
>mining operations here in the West), nobody should have any right to
>stop him. If he wants to strip-mine or clear-cut his mountain and
>thereby destroy everybody else's water supply (as the Taylors have
>been doing), nobody should have any right to stop him.
As a Libertarian, I believe that what he does should neither his own
decision or subject to local community control. It should be put
under the rule of law, mand that law should let him do anything he
chooses that doesn't cause harm to someone outside of his property
border, and stopped by the government if he does cause harm to
someone outside of his property border.
Guy Macon
>Also, I have repeatedly pointed out that *present* warming is not
>the real concern.
Correct. You just warn that we are at risk of future warming,
which is a subtle difference that I overlooked.
Richard Stamper
> I want you to carefully read the last 32 words of the summary:
> They are an important clue.
>
> Historical carbon dioxide record from the Vostok ice core
>
> J.M. Barnola, D. Raynaud, C. Lorius
> Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Géophysique de l'Environnement,
> CNRS, BP96, 38402 Saint Martin d'Heres Cedex, France
>
> N.I. Barkov
> Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, Beringa Street 38,
> 199397, St. Petersburg, Russia
<snip>
> According to Barnola et al.
> (1991) and Petit et al. (1999) these measurements indicate
> that, at the beginning of the deglaciations, the CO2 increase
> either was in phase or lagged by less than ~1000 years with
> respect to the Antarctic temperature, whereas it clearly
> lagged behind the temperature at the onset of the glaciations.
>
>
> Did you get that last part?
>
> Has it occured to you that ice ages reduce the amount of
> plants, and plants reduce CO2 levels?
>
> How do you tell which is cause and which is effect?
>
> The way you tell is by seeing what lags and what leads.
>
> ***THE CO2 CHANGE LAGS BEHIND THE TEMPERATURE CHANGE!!!!***
>
> Let me repeat that again (shouting)
>
> ***THE CO2 CHANGE LAGS BEHIND THE TEMPERATURE CHANGE!!!!***
>
> Let me quote the scientists who took the data:
>
> "these measurements indicate that, at the beginning of
> the deglaciations, the CO2 increase either was in phase
> or lagged by less than ~1000 years with respect to the
> Antarctic temperature, whereas it clearly lagged behind
> the temperature at the onset of the glaciations."
>
> This means that either the temperature change causes
> the CO2 change, or some third factor causes both.
>
> You are smart. Think it through. Effects do nor precede causes.
Thanks for the compliment. I didn't actually say that CO2 levels determined
temperature or vice versa. I noted the identical form of the two curves of
CO2 and temperature for the last 400K years, and that CO2 was now well outside
the range it had exhibited all that time.
To say that CO2 determines temperature is incorrect, as you comment, but it is
a key element in the natural feedback systems of the carbon cycle involving
plants, the oceans and weathering of rocks.
>
> So? It has exceeded that range in the past, and we know pretty much what
> the climate was like during those periods. Why does it matter how long ago?
Because the disposition of the continents appears to be key in determining the
stable states of the climate/ocean system. Once the continents are not
roughly distributed as they are now (latitudewise, to use a neologism), the
lessons for the present are very limited.
>
> Before global warming started 18,000 years ago most of the earth was a
> frozen and arid wasteland. Over half of earth's surface was covered by
> glaciers or extreme desert. Forests were rare. Not a very fun place to live.
>
> Global warming over the last 15,000 years has changed our world from an ice
> box to a garden. Today extreme deserts and glaciers have largely given way
> to grasslands, woodlands, and forests. I wish it could last forever.
> I would like to see more of the same. I *like* forests and grasslands.
>
>
> YEARS AGO CO2 ppm
>
> 1 365
>
> 10 357
>
> 100 298
>
> 1,000 279
>
> 10,000 259
>
> 100,000 229
>
> 1,000,000 200
I suspect that between 1 and 10 million years ago plate tectonics starts to be
significant, so the atmospheric CO2 levels are no longer comparable with those
now since the whole climate/ocean system had different quasi-stable states.
>
> 10,000,000 500
>
> 250,000,000 2,000
>
> 300,000,000 350
>
> 500,000,000 10,000
>
> 4,500,000,000 1,000,000
>
Cheers,
--
Richard Stamper
Dennis White
Yes indeed, you too *only* asked a question. And it is as meaningless
and as out of context as your assertion that I have accused Russell of
dishonesty. It is the spirit in which I asked, and not the words that is
most important. We are not all as clever and educated and bright as
you...play word games if you like. It is faith that drives me more than the
ability to debate with you.
The meaningless of your question is not in that I never began beating
my wife....it is in that I am not married. Therefore, I'd say that like
your problem with how I ask Russell a question (notice I did not ask him to
*answer* honestly,for his answer to ME is meaningless)is as out of whack
with you wordplay. If you wish to continue this argument you will be doing
it without my participation. It seems that your M.O. sometimes is to divert
the topic away from the question at hand and toward nit-picking and debate
tactics. It doesn't further the discussion....it inflames it.
Dennis
"Guy Macon" <guym...@deltanet.com> wrote in message
news:9j64vl$9...@dispatch.concentric.net...
> Dennis White wrote:
> > >I asked him a question.
>
> So, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
>
> (I *only* asked a question....)
>
Dennis White
evidence in itself. End of argument.
Dennis
"Guy Macon" <guym...@deltanet.com> wrote in message
news:9j648c$i...@dispatch.concentric.net...
> Dennis White wrote:
>
> >"Guy Macon" wrote:
> >
> >> I can't see them either. Am I also blind, or are they not there?
> >
> >You are blind.
>
> Evidence, please.
>
>
Gregory Shubert
news:tqk4rs9...@wdcc1k.bnsc.rl.ac.uk...
>
> Unless human activity or some other unknown factor has changed the climate
> system significantly, then an ice age is not possible with current levels
of
> atmospheric CO2.
>
I wouldn't make that claim. The earth's climate is a complex, nonlinear
system, and not completely understood.
"Palaeoclimatologists tell us that another glacial maximum is due 'any day
now' on the geological time scale, but this scenario of pending climate
change ignores the wildcard played by greenhouse emissions. Strong
arguments have been made that they will result in a warmer world and equally
strong ones have been put that greenhouse gases will hasten the onset of the
next advance of the ice. At present frightening unceertainty stares us in
the face." Tim Flannery, "The Eternal Frontier: An ecological history of
North America and its peoples", p. 148.
One way that global warming might paradoxically trigger an ice age is that
warmer oceans and atmosphere would hold more water vapor. Snowfall over
polar regions could increase. If snowfall exceeds melting, over the course
of a year, then ice buildup occurs, and glaciation could increase.
I think this reinforces the need for all humans to be careful of their
impacts on earth's climate, geography, natural resources, and living things.
--
Gregory D. Shubert gregs...@att.net
Forrest Parkinson
think that a willingness to manipulate our environment is practically
definitional for our species.
Maybe we should endeavor to figure out ways to manipulate climate on a global
scale so that we can maintain a global climate that suits "us". Of course, it
would help if Earthings thought of themselves as an "us"
I do not think that golbal climate manipulation is desireable. I just think
that planned manipulation, and research to figure out how, would ultimately
work out better than the current approach asking humans to turn back the clock
of human environmental intervention (will not happen) or denying the evidence
of human impact (denial has predictable outcomes.)
It seems to me, that our species, and maybe even the rest of Earth's remaining
species, would benefit as much from our ability to prevent an ice age as we
would from our ability to slow global warming.
Global environmental manipulation is something like farming on a worldwide
scale.
Anyhow, just a thought from a dreamer.
>I think this reinforces the need for all humans to be careful of their
>impacts on earth's climate, geography, natural resources, and living things.
>
>--
>Gregory D. Shubert gregs...@att.net
Peace, friends,
Richard Stamper
> "Richard Stamper" <sta...@wdcc1k.bnsc.rl.ac.uk> wrote in message
> news:tqk4rs9...@wdcc1k.bnsc.rl.ac.uk...
> >
> > Unless human activity or some other unknown factor has changed the climate
> > system significantly, then an ice age is not possible with current levels
> of
> > atmospheric CO2.
> >
>
> I wouldn't make that claim. The earth's climate is a complex, nonlinear
> system, and not completely understood.
I hoped my qualifying 'unless' clause would protect me. What I was trying to
point out was that Guy need have no fear of us tipping back into an ice age
under the climate regime that has operated for the last 400,000 years. Under
that scheme you do not get ice ages with current levels of CO2. In fact, you
don't get current levels of CO2. The question of whether the levels of CO2
and land use changes that we have brought about will push the climate system
into another set of states, possibly including ice ages is, I agree, an
entirely open question.
This, however, is not the bugaboo with which Guy is trying to persuade people
not to worry about global warming. His position is that anthropogenic effects
are trivial by comparison with natural ones and hence the next ice age could
come and get us any moment, not that anthropogenic effects might, through
warming, inadvertently trigger an ice age through increased snowfall at high
latitudes.
I hope I got that right (my statement of Guy's position, that is) because I am
sure to be corrected if I didn't. I've noticed he is very keen on not having
words put in his mouth :-)
--
Richard Stamper
Russell Nelson
> All
> Russells words:
> "Even worse, politicians horizon maxes out at the next election...."
> I contend that not all politician's horizons max out at the next
> election. I believe some seek elected office seeking to change things for
> the better.
Of course they do. But if they don't worry about getting re-elected,
then unless they're lucky and voters choose them by accident, they
won't get re-elected.
> My question to Russell:
> "Have you ever thought that statements like this are so full of
> stereotype that it makes it difficult to see through them and into any
> unbiased sincere and honest perspective"?
>
> Mine was a question....not an accusation.
No, Dennis, I object to your asking me "What is the honest reason that
you hang on to your acreage?" Maybe you don't perceive it as an
accusation that previous answers have been dishonest, or that a
current answer wouldn't be honest. For my part, I try to avoid
certain phrases like "Really", or "Honestly", because I perceive them
as oaths. Am I being oversensitive?
--
-russ nelson <s...@russnelson.com> http://russnelson.com
Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok |
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | #exclude <windows.h>
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX |
Russell Nelson
> > " What is the honest reason". That implies that the previous
> > answer was dishonest. Russell has flaws like we all do, but
> > being dishonest isn't one of them.
>
> There wasn't a previous answer. I simply asked, for the first time, the
> honest reason to own property....I asked Russell to look into himself and
> ask honestly. If you wish to turn that around, so be it. That was not my
> intention, whichever way you choose to interpret it.
Well it sure sounded to me like you thought that unless you made a
special effort to remind me to be honest, that I would lie. We
disagree on things, Dennis, but I don't accuse you of being dishonest.
One of the reasons I enjoy stating my opinions and defending them to
Friends is because we are starting from a mutual respect for each
other, and for the truth we're seeking together. I can name no other
discussion venue where that same respect is present.
> I don't think we need to bring Chess and Olympic sprinters into the
> argument. Russell says he believes "politician's horizon maxes out at the
> next election (sic)". This is not roundly true, and I believe it is a stale
> view to believe it and stereotypical to state it. I am aware of many good,
> honest people who have sought office with a sincere desire to serve their
> communities and promote their idea of good government.
Sure. I didn't say that they didn't. It's just that they're not
going to be politicians for very long, and they're not going to do
anything which takes more than one term to accomplish if they don't
pay attention, first and foremost, to getting re-elected. They might
*want* to do many helpful things which take more than one term, but if
if they're not re-elected, those things aren't going to happen.
> The majority of elected officials in this country are hard-working,
> down-to-earth folk. I'm sick of hearing them all lumped together,
> spoken of without any individuality and routinely criticised because
> some of us don't believe in the same system of government that they
> honestly believe in.
But it's the nature of their job, Dennis! It doesn't matter what you
believe, what I believe, or what they believe. The job of
"politician" has certain attributes, and unless a better job
description is "dictator", then any issues of concern to them which
take longer than one term to implement take a back seat to getting
elected. They MUST, because the politician who doesn't get elected
has no control. It's not an attribute of the people, it's an
attribute of the job.
> If government has problems I believe it is better to seek real
> change rather than continue complaining and bad-mouthing simple
> concerned citizens who wish to contribute to society.
But Dennis, I'm not just complaining. I'm saying "This is a problem,
and here is the solution to it."
Dennis White
"Russell Nelson" <nel...@crynwr.com> wrote in message
news:m28zhk5...@desk.crynwr.com...
> "Dennis White" <denn...@hotmail.com> writes:
>
> > All
> > Russells words:
> > "Even worse, politicians horizon maxes out at the next
election...."
> > I contend that not all politician's horizons max out at the next
> > election. I believe some seek elected office seeking to change things
for
> > the better.
>
> Of course they do. But if they don't worry about getting re-elected,
> then unless they're lucky and voters choose them by accident, they
> won't get re-elected.
You assume that all positions are even open to re-election. Many school
boards and local governments do not even allow it. The overwhelming
majority of elected positions in this country are not high-profile. They
concern the mundane management of local affairs, and very little money
and/or time is even spent on elections in most cases.
>
> > My question to Russell:
> > "Have you ever thought that statements like this are so full of
> > stereotype that it makes it difficult to see through them and into any
> > unbiased sincere and honest perspective"?
> >
> > Mine was a question....not an accusation.
>
> No, Dennis, I object to your asking me "What is the honest reason that
> you hang on to your acreage?" Maybe you don't perceive it as an
> accusation that previous answers have been dishonest, or that a
> current answer wouldn't be honest. For my part, I try to avoid
> certain phrases like "Really", or "Honestly", because I perceive them
> as oaths. Am I being oversensitive?
That's very high minded of you Russell.....but I still believe that you (and
Guy) are attacking me for using the word "honest" as a kind of distraction.
My intention was not to imply that you were a liar. At any rate it was you
who accused me of being dishonest, and suggested I take a look into a
mirror. I don't seek honest answers from you. You will answer as you will,
and I must take it at face value. I only meant to urge you to look into
your heart and examine all the possibilities.
I also suggest that since we are all here for a short time it might be
a good idea to find a way to keep your land protected for more than the 40
or 50 years that you are able to protect it. Some make their land a gift to
organizations like the Nature Conservancy or leave it in trust. Perhaps you
have done something already. If not, there is no time like the present.
None of us knows....
Dennis
Russell Nelson
> Guy, if you cannot see Russell's prejudices, or your own, than that is
> evidence in itself. End of argument.
You can call them prejudices if you want, but I'm not sure that's the
best use of the word. If it seems like I have a prejudice, it is
because I have studied and learned how some things work. For example,
I am "prejudiced" into believing that two plus three equals five. It
has every time I've tried it, and there's a theory that predicts that
it will always be five. Similarly I am "prejudiced" into believing
that a minimum wage causes higher waves for some and unemployment for
others. Others who look at the issue without my "prejudice" see
higher wages but cannot see the unemployment.
Dennis White
Then surely it does no good to group all office holders together as you did.
>
> > The majority of elected officials in this country are hard-working,
> > down-to-earth folk. I'm sick of hearing them all lumped together,
> > spoken of without any individuality and routinely criticised because
> > some of us don't believe in the same system of government that they
> > honestly believe in.
>
> But it's the nature of their job, Dennis! It doesn't matter what you
> believe, what I believe, or what they believe. The job of
> "politician" has certain attributes, and unless a better job
> description is "dictator", then any issues of concern to them which
> take longer than one term to implement take a back seat to getting
> elected. They MUST, because the politician who doesn't get elected
> has no control. It's not an attribute of the people, it's an
> attribute of the job.
No...the nature of their job is to do the work they were elected do. There
are many who are more concerned about the job at hand, whether you want to
aknowledge it or not. BTW, I am a firm advocate of election reform, but is
still doesn't seem to me that I have the right to categorize the character
and motives of hundreds of thousands-perhaps millions-of my fellow citizens.
This is what it appears to me that you have done, and I take offense to it
on several levels. It is but another example of how you appear to me to
come across as arrogant and sanctimonious. If that is not your intention,
then perhaps it is my misinterpretation...or perhaps it is a flaw in how you
present yourself.
>
> > If government has problems I believe it is better to seek real
> > change rather than continue complaining and bad-mouthing simple
> > concerned citizens who wish to contribute to society.
>
> But Dennis, I'm not just complaining. I'm saying "This is a problem,
> and here is the solution to it."
No...you said here is the problem...and here is the *only good* solution, as
if the rest of us weren't enlightened enough to choose any other remedy.
That is opinion.
Dennis
Russell Nelson
> Then the second issue. Where land is private, and not a commons,
> you seem to feel that what the owner does with it should be entirely
> his own decision and not subject to any sort of local community
> control. If he wants to pour cyanide into the water table, and
> thereby poison his neighbors' wells (which happens in modern gold
> mining operations here in the West), nobody should have any right to
> stop him. If he wants to strip-mine or clear-cut his mountain and
> thereby destroy everybody else's water supply (as the Taylors have
> been doing), nobody should have any right to stop him.
No rational system of law requires you to sit still while your future
property rights are being threatened. It's a slur against
libertarianism to claim that that's how it would operate.
> If the Taylors had no choice but to live full-time locally, they
> would have to face the fact that their actions are rendering their own
> land uninhabitable even for themselves -- and they would have to
> suffer the consequences.
The purpose of the law is not to prevent people from doing stupid
things to themselves. It's to prevent people from doing stupid things
to other people. When the law is perverted, it produces perverted
results.
Russell Nelson
> "Russell Nelson" <nel...@crynwr.com> wrote in message
> news:m2lmlp5...@desk.crynwr.com...
>
> snip
>
> >
> > What matters is that the people making the decisions about the
> > resource expect to be able to reap the rewards. If you have a
> > situation which causes a transfer in control, you can reasonably
> > expect the people currently in control to do what they have to do to
> > keep control, even if that means destroying some or even most of the
> > resource.
>
> snip
>
> Do you really believe that-say- the majority of people- or perhaps we
> should include corporations in this as well- believe and act this way? I
> don't see it. Many hostile takeovers occur in business, many people are
> forced by exigencies to give up positions of control. There are not many
> stories of destruction such as you imply.
What about poison pill plans?
> I think you give a view of people
> as 'dog in the manger' mentalities that most manage to transcend. Can you
> give some examples of people 'destroying some or even most' of the resources
> they were attempting to retain within their control as that control was
> leaving them? I just haven't seen it. Most will keep the resource in good
> shape to make the best of the transfer.
Maybe I'm just repeating rumors, but I've heard stories of landowners
who kill endangered species rather than lose control over their land.
Mike
going to act with integrity. Integrity means doing the best you know how
even if it means no reelection and even if you are not understood.
I have always acted in my job to organize my work so that I am no longer
needed. This may seem suicidal, illogical and certainly unpredictable on the
part of cynics, but my integrity requires it.
Michael
Guy Macon
Guy Macon wrote:
>> You are smart. Think it through. Effects do nor precede causes.
>
>Thanks for the compliment.
It was heartfelt. You *are* smart.
>I didn't actually say that CO2 levels determined
>temperature or vice versa. I noted the identical form of the two curves of
>CO2 and temperature for the last 400K years, and that CO2 was now well
>outside the range it had exhibited all that time.
>
>To say that CO2 determines temperature is incorrect, as you comment, but
>it is a key element in the natural feedback systems of the carbon cycle
>involving plants, the oceans and weathering of rocks.
(snip)
>Because the disposition of the continents appears to be key in determining
>the stable states of the climate/ocean system. Once the continents are
>not roughly distributed as they are now (latitudewise, to use a neologism),
>the lessons for the present are very limited.
(snip)
>I suspect that between 1 and 10 million years ago plate tectonics starts
>to be significant, so the atmospheric CO2 levels are no longer comparable
>with those now since the whole climate/ocean system had different
>quasi-stable states.
O.K. I see your argument and it seems flawless to me. I retract past
statements and hereby agree that the present situation is new and unique,
and I agree that whenever that happens there is cause for concern.
To me, the best thing to do is to monitor the situation, do the basic
science right, and try to replace the present rather useless computer
models with ones that can predict the future using only data from the
past.
As I said before, Global warming over the last 15,000 years has
changed our world from an ice box to a garden. Extreme deserts and
Guy Macon
>It seems that your M.O. sometimes is to divert the topic away from
>the question at hand and toward nit-picking and debate tactics.
>It doesn't further the discussion....it inflames it.
As a pacifist I choose to avoid conflict by not commenting on what
you wrote above.
Guy Macon
I have no answer to someone who claims that anyone who disagrees
is blind. Let me know if you ever choose to address the issues
instead of engaging in personal attacks, and please accept my
apology for giving in to the desire to reply in kind.
Dennis White wrote:
>
>Guy, if you cannot see Russell's prejudices, or your own, than that is
>evidence in itself. End of argument.
>Dennis
>
Guy Macon
I agree 100% on all points. I got involved in this issue when I gained
access to some very powerful computers and started running my own copies
of various computer simulations. When I pick a date of , say 1990, give
the simulation only pre-1991 data and try to simulate what actually
happened, It does not predict very well without special correction
factors. When I change the date, I need to use different factors.
Especially troubling is the difference between the surface record and
the record of the upper layers from satellites and weather balloons.
Complicating all of this is the difficulty of getting the latest
simulations. I am very unsatisfied with the way H2O is modelled
- there is no model for way that H2O causes warming as a gas, but
cooling as a cloud of small liquid or solid particles. There is so
much that we don't know... I just can't support taking action when we
don't know what action is best.
Guy Macon
>
>"Gregory Shubert" writes:
>
>> Richard Stamper" wrote...
>>>
>>> Unless human activity or some other unknown factor has changed
>>> the climate system significantly, then an ice age is not
>>> possible with current levels of atmospheric CO2.
>>
>> I wouldn't make that claim. The earth's climate is a complex,
>> nonlinear system, and not completely understood.
>
>I hoped my qualifying 'unless' clause would protect me. What I
>was trying to point out was that Guy need have no fear of us
>tipping back into an ice age under the climate regime that has
>operated for the last 400,000 years. Under that scheme you do not
>get ice ages with current levels of CO2. In fact, you don't get
>current levels of CO2. The question of whether the levels of CO2
>and land use changes that we have brought about will push the
>climate system into another set of states, possibly including ice
>ages is, I agree, an entirely open question.
So you are saying:
[1] I should not fear that CO2 levels in the 100 to 300 ppm range
will cause an ice age.
[2] Were are now at 360 ppm and rising.
[3] You have no idea what will happen at 370 ppm or 380 ppm. It could
trigger runaway venus-style greenhouse, snowball earth, or anything
in between - you don't know because we have never had an earth with
380 ppm of CO2 plus the present configuration of continents, additional
fluorocarbons, other pollutants such as hydrocarbons and oxides of
nitrogen, etc. etc. This is new territory.
Pardon me if I am not reassured...
>This, however, is not the bugaboo with which Guy is trying to persuade
>people not to worry about global warming.
I am trying no such thing. I am trying to get people to do the science
before going off half-baked with a solution that may make things worse.
>His position is that anthropogenic effects are trivial by comparison
>with natural ones
I wouldn't say "trivial". I would say "unknown".
>and hence the next ice age could come and get us any moment, not that
>anthropogenic effects might, through warming, inadvertently trigger
>an ice age through increased snowfall at high latitudes.
I don't think we know enough to rule out either possibility.
>I hope I got that right (my statement of Guy's position, that is)
>because I am sure to be corrected if I didn't. I've noticed he is
>very keen on not having words put in his mouth :-)
People restate, paraphrase, amplify on, and draw conclusions from
what other people write all of the time. That's not putting words
in someone's mouth. Putting words in someone's mouth is when they
say, 'no, that isn't my position' and someone says 'yes it is'.
The former is ordinary discourse. The latter is one of many cheap
debating tricks that are used by those who put winning above learning.
Alas, those who use the latter as a debating technique tend to classify
all instances of the former as also being the latter once the topic
comes up. - it's an obvious ploy to extend the effectiveness of the
cheap debating trick.
I have never seen Richard Stamper or Gregory Shubert show any tendency
to put winning above learning, and I hope that I don't. The usual sign
is that learners occasionally change their position based on what someone
else says or writes. The "winners" (how did I paint myself into the
semantic corner of calling losers winners?) don't.
Guy
Dennis White wrote:
>
>Russell Nelson wrote:
>
>>
>> No, Dennis, I object to your asking me "What is the honest reason that
>> you hang on to your acreage?" Maybe you don't perceive it as an
>> accusation that previous answers have been dishonest, or that a
>> current answer wouldn't be honest. For my part, I try to avoid
>> certain phrases like "Really", or "Honestly", because I perceive them
>> as oaths. Am I being oversensitive?
>
>That's very high minded of you Russell.....but I still believe that you (and
>Guy) are attacking me for using the word "honest" as a kind of distraction.
Dennis, please apologize to Russell for insulting him instead of
piling on more insults and including me in them. It's O.K. if you
put in that you didn't mean it as an insult.
You just wrote that I am trying to distract. That isn't true and
you have no way of knowing my motives or internal mental state.
I tell you plainly that I have no desire to distract anyone from
anything, and I ask you to retract your statement concerning my
motives.
Guy Macon
>...a minimum wage causes higher waves for some...
Surfs up, dude! ;)
Guy Macon
> The majority of elected officials in this country are hard-working,
> down-to-earth folk. I'm sick of hearing them all lumped together,
It's the 99.99% of politicians, lawyers, used car salsemen,
dictators, telemarketers and spammers who are lowlife slimeballs
who make the rest of them look bad.
Richard Stamper
> Richard Stamper wrote:
> >
> >"Gregory Shubert" writes:
> >
> >> Richard Stamper" wrote...
> >>>
> >>> Unless human activity or some other unknown factor has changed
> >>> the climate system significantly, then an ice age is not
> >>> possible with current levels of atmospheric CO2.
> >>
> >> I wouldn't make that claim. The earth's climate is a complex,
> >> nonlinear system, and not completely understood.
> >
> >I hoped my qualifying 'unless' clause would protect me. What I
> >was trying to point out was that Guy need have no fear of us
> >tipping back into an ice age under the climate regime that has
> >operated for the last 400,000 years. Under that scheme you do not
> >get ice ages with current levels of CO2. In fact, you don't get
> >current levels of CO2. The question of whether the levels of CO2
> >and land use changes that we have brought about will push the
> >climate system into another set of states, possibly including ice
> >ages is, I agree, an entirely open question.
>
> So you are saying:
>
> [1] I should not fear that CO2 levels in the 100 to 300 ppm range
> will cause an ice age.
Not quite; if CO2 levels were falling it would be evidence that the current
interglacial was ending. They aren't, so I don't think we need to worry on
that score.
>
> [2] Were are now at 360 ppm and rising.
>
> [3] You have no idea what will happen at 370 ppm or 380 ppm. It could
> trigger runaway venus-style greenhouse, snowball earth, or anything
> in between - you don't know because we have never had an earth with
> 380 ppm of CO2 plus the present configuration of continents, additional
> fluorocarbons, other pollutants such as hydrocarbons and oxides of
> nitrogen, etc. etc. This is new territory.
>
> Pardon me if I am not reassured...
>
I'm glad you're not reassured! There's a scary hypothesis around about the
release of CO2 trapped in deep ocean sediments. The deep ocean temperature
only needs to rise a little (can't remember how much) to let much of this out.
> >This, however, is not the bugaboo with which Guy is trying to persuade
> >people not to worry about global warming.
>
> I am trying no such thing. I am trying to get people to do the science
> before going off half-baked with a solution that may make things worse.
>
That's fair enough, but I don't see how trying to limit human CO2 emissions
could make things worse. Get CO2 back within the 400,000 year limits and I'd
be a happy bunny.
--
Richard Stamper
Guy Macon
>
>
>guym...@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) writes:
>
>>
>> So you are saying:
>>
>> [1] I should not fear that CO2 levels in the 100 to 300 ppm range
>> will cause an ice age.
>
>Not quite; if CO2 levels were falling it would be evidence that the current
>interglacial was ending. They aren't, so I don't think we need to worry on
>that score.
>
I don't understand how you come to that conclusion, knowing that CO2
level drops typically lag temerature drops but around 1,000 years.
If the interglacial is ending, the CO2 levels won't show it untill
around the year 3000.
You will, I am sure. forgive me for ignoring your advice not to worry.
Guy Macon
>That's fair enough, but I don't see how trying to limit human CO2 emissions
>could make things worse. Get CO2 back within the 400,000 year limits and I'd
>be a happy bunny.
If the following unproven assertions are true, then limiting human
CO2 emissions could make things worse:
[1] We are on the brink of an ice age.
[2] Human CO2 raises the temperature through anm amplified greenhouse effect.
[3] The human caused warming is waht is holding back the ice-age.
None of the three are proven true or proven false. I conclude
that limiting human CO2 emissions could make things worse
Limiting human CO2 emissions to the point where the atmoshere goes
back to 300 ppm will probably cause a large increase in human suffering.
Guy Macon
>>
>> [1] I should not fear that CO2 levels in the 100 to 300 ppm range
>> will cause an ice age.
>
>Not quite; if CO2 levels were falling it would be evidence that the current
>interglacial was ending. They aren't, so I don't think we need to worry on
>that score.
>
I don't understand how you come to that conclusion, knowing that CO2
level drops typically lag temerature drops by around 1,000 years.
Marshall Massey
gm> I see. Both claims could be true. He may allow locals
>> to graze, hunt fish, etc without charge and still shoot
>> people like you who are not locals.
Well, both statements may be true, but not, I believe, in the
particular sense you propose here.
The reason I say that is that, while I was researching the
situation in 1997 and 1998, the order to shoot to kill applied to
*any* trespasser, locals included. San Luis locals did not dare go
onto the Taylor Ranch for any reason at all. They were quite upset
about this, since there were specific places on the mountain that
each family I talked with had regarded as their own since time out of
mind.
gm> From "What a Libertarian Is - and Is Not" by Sam Wells
>> http://www.laissez-fairerepublic.com/libertar.htm
I appreciate the clarification. I am sure I was never a libertarian
in such an extreme sense. I did not, for instance, support my
daughter's "right" to play hooky from high school, back when she was
at a peak of rebelliousness.
As for OSHA laws, they probably saved my body and health more
than once during my years as an employee of various corporations. I
was always glad when an OSHA inspector came and actually cited my
employer for some scary problem like improper ventilation of toxic
fumes in my workplace, or overloaded electric circuits and unprotected
electric cables running across walkways, or inadequate access to fire
exits.
And similarly for anti-trust laws --
With all good wishes,
Marshall Massey <mma...@earthwitness.org>
Marshall Massey
mf> Some of your statements have led me to suspect that you
>> may be a follower of the Sierra Club party line on
>> logging.
I see. Because I condemn a law that they, too, have condemned, you
suspect I must be -- gasp! -- *one of them*.
Golly, I don't know whether to feel flattered or insulted.
But one person may see wrong in a law without being like another
person who also sees wrong in that law. Liberal secular humanists in
New York City and reactionary Baptists in Tennessee both object to
George W. Bush's proposal to make government funding more available to
churches, and for many of the same reasons, but that doesn't mean the
one group is like the other.
And I may object to the same law that the Sierra Club objects to,
but that doesn't mean I'm a Sierra Clubber. (And in point of fact, I
am not.)
mf> They do not say so directly, but I take it that they [the
>> Sierra Club] would oppose the cutting down of any tree
>> for any purpose.
Actually, I know Sierra Clubbers who heat their homes with saw-cut
wood. There are some I have met who build furniture, and some I have
met who build houses. The Clubbers I have met who do such things just
happen to be choosy about where the wood comes from.
mf> Apparently timber is not considered by them [the Sierra
>> Club] as a renewable resource, so they will be opposed to
>> any logging, and it does not matter what the circumstances
>> are.
On the contrary, it *does* matter to them what the circumstances are.
That was the whole basis of the Club's objection to the Salvage
Logging Rider, if I remember correctly. The circumstances under which
trees were being cut under the authority of the Salvage Logging Rider
were frequently circumstances of which the Club could not approve.
mf> When people of this agenda scream about clearcut logging,
>> I really wonder if that is the issue.
Yes, clearcuts are indeed the issue. Perhaps if you were to *see*
clearcuts on mountainsides here in the West, up close and personal as
I have done, you might begin to understand.
mf> When there are such polarised and ruthless (shooting at
>> Taylor and burning his house down) partisans at work, it
>> is really hard to know the truth, because you know that
>> you cannot rely on what people tell you.
Hmmm. The first persons I talked to in San Luis were the top Catholic
priest and several of his assistants. From them I went on to talk to
a variety of political community leaders, each of whom had his own
position and each of whom disputed the others on various points. I
also collected comments from ordinary citizens, and I had a fairly
substantial body of media coverage to check everyone's story against
as well. Plus I spoke with the Colorado Governor's Office, and with a
variety of outsiders who had been involved in various ways.
Consider this against the fact that there are several thousand
people in the valley, spread out over hundreds of square miles. For
this diversity of leaders and ordinary people, drawn from this large a
population and area, to all orchestrate their responses to me as you
suggest, would require a conspiracy of dazzling breadth and unity, and
all to deceive little old me. I'm sure I'm not *that* important.
And then there were the aerial photographs of the clearcuts.
Are you proposing those were forged? And the silted-up *acequias*
too?
mf> Yes, a whole community can work together to pull the wool
>> over the eyes of strangers. ... It is an old Western
>> tradition to tell tall tales to strangers, with a
>> straight face and brag about who is the best at it.
The people I was talking to had a strong reason for not doing any
such thing: it was not a joking time in their eyes; it was a time for
pleading for help. A drowning man doesn't tell tall tales to the
fellow who's throwing him a rope.
Marshall Massey
gm> As a Libertarian, I believe that what he does should
>> neither his own decision or subject to local community
>> control. It should be put under the rule of law....
And who writes the laws, if the local community doesn't? Washington
DC? The offending landowner himself?
Zoning laws are laws written by the local community to prevent
such abuses of land use as I've described. They are not always fair.
But they do seem to be much, much better than nothing.