🚀 go-pugleaf

smtp.syix.com writes:
>The article by "Friends of the River" entitled "California's Best
>Opportunity to Achieve Improved Flood Control While Restoring Wetlands &
>Wildlife Habitat" was disingenuous and misleading.  When a follow up
>post by (a self proclaimed dam engineer) suggested dams too should be
>considered as one of many viable flood control alternatives, the
>environmental elitists came out of the woodwork to hurl personal
>attacks, junk science and anything else at this person in order to
>suppress the idea of yet another dam.

Please look up the definition of "elitist".  You seem to think it is just
a noise word, to be thrown in whenever you want.  If you think that only
dam engineers may comment on the wisdom of dam building, then I'm afraid
that it is you who are an elitist.

>Whether or not people died in
>floods was just down right irrelevant; they just couldn't have cared
>less. One such poster's reply was "Move to higher ground".

And that's completely appropriate.  Building in flood plains is stupid.
Spending billions of dollars on engineering projects to make it safer
to build in flood plains compounds the stupidity.  I certainly won't
say that flood control dams are *never* appropriate, but they are an
expensive and over-used option.  They are a big-government solution;
usually those who attack environmentalists accuse the environmentalists
of advocating "big government" but in the case of dams it is the reverse.

>While they accuse farmers of having lobbyist that pour money into
>politicians pocket books, they fail to disclose how many politician's
>coffers they've filled. What hypocrites!

You speak as though the environmental lobbyists have a lot of money.
They don't.  The amount of money spent by environmental lobbies is
miniscule compared to that spent by the agribusiness lobby, or even
by one company (ADM, the biggest agribusiness lobbyist) alone.  It is
a drop in the bucket.

>It seems as though there's
>always someone else available for them to blame. It would be taboo for
>them to accept responsibility for any cause & effect relationship.

Bizarre.  You build in a flood plain is a cause; you get flooded is an
effect.  It is the developers that are refusing to accept responsibility.
It is the environmentalists who are pushing responsibility in this
particular case.

>The suggestion to move is a little LATE,

It's not a new suggestion.

>and the mere idea that stopping
>further development will somehow rescind the need for flood control is
>ridiculous.

Of course, but this is a straw man.  No one's saying that no other means
of flood control should be attempted.

You keep tossing the phrase "junk science" around, but you don't quote
respected scientists, you quote politicians, e.g.

>Both US Representative
>Wally Herger & California Assemblyman Bernie Richter have stated their
>concerns that a pond habitat built just 600 ft from the Yuba levee
>breach may have contributed to the flood disaster.

Big deal.  Where is their evidence?

>How much junk science was presented in these elitist arguments? 

How much junk science is in Herger and Richter's argument?

>For more information on the connection between environmental elitist and
>junk science, go to http://www.junkscience.com.

I've looked at that site.  It is in itself junk science.  Some of their
arguments would make a tobacco lobbyist proud.

I am astounded to see that this site argues against Mexico banning DDT.
If it weren't for the US ban on DDT, the American bald eagle, symbol of
the country, might well be extinct by now.  The reproductive problems
in birds referred to in

http://www.junkscience.com/news/mexican-ddt-ban.html

are severe: the eggs are so thin that they crack when the mother bird
sits on them.  Do you think that's not going to do anything to people?
But the major flaw is that it ignores the fact that other insecticides
are available.  This is the old false-choices argument: pretend there
are only two choices when there are more.  Pretend there is either DDT
or nothing.  Pretend we either must build dams or have no flood control.

The page
http://www.junkscience.com/news/sea-level-rise.html

shows an astounding flaw in reasoning: the author seems to think that
global warming is no longer an issue because one experiment showing
sea level rises was flawed.  The author must think that the only reason
scientists are worried about global warming is that one experiment.
Sad.
-- 
-- Joe Buck	http://www.synopsys.com/pubs/research/people/jbuck.html

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