I hope Shellenberger wins. I suspect he is California's last hope.
He sums up the overall problem--not just with California politicians, but with political leaders all over the U.S--very astutely: "100-percent certain about what they couldn’t know, and weirdly unsure about how to fix things that could be fixed."
I hope Shellenberger wins. I suspect he is California's last hope.
He sums up the overall problem--not just with California politicians, but with political leaders all over the U.S--very astutely: "100-percent certain about what they couldn’t know, and weirdly unsure about how to fix things that could be fixed."
California is just an extreme version of what's happening all over the US, especially in the coastal regions where the establishment and elite dominate.
He had me back when "Apocalypse Never" came out, Celia.
My views about the environment might be described as back woods conservationist.
Want to cut down a 100 acres worth of trees to make newsprint? Then you'd better have a program to plant 300 acres worth of new trees, or I'll call you an a** hole.
I eventually bought five more copies of Michael's book, which I lent to five of my best educated friends. The result? Four of the five friends with advanced degrees in medicine, education, and business management read a few chapters and said the book was propaganda and everyone knows renewables are our only hope for saving the planet.
The man who read the book cover to cover was a lawyer who had been one of my best friends for decades, and the only lawyer I knew who had won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
(Yeah for small town lawyers beating the white shoe crowd!)
He thanked me for providing him with a very well written book about a topic he never knew was so important.
He laughed when I suggested he was now one in a thousand in terms of people who truly know how electricity finds its way into our modern lives.
We all suffer from assumptions.
I still love the four friends who have drunk the "renewables" cool aid.
People I love remain loved in spite of their short comings. After all, they still love me after five decades, warts and all.
Now, if only those of us who do not live in the mess that is California could vote by mail, then Michael might stand a chance in the primary🤔
EDIT: I eventually found a good home for those copies of Michael's book by donating them to the public library in Bangor, Maine . . . the same library whose biggest patrons are Steve and Tabitha King.
Admittedly, the resource stream for industrial hemp is in its infancy. It was decriminalized in 2018 nationally and COVID somewhat stalled its use/adoption. But, it will happen.
Thank you for the link, Lightwing. The report was very interesting.
Having spent all of my working life in Maine, I learned a lot about making pulp 😁
Right now, the hemp based pulp will increase in popularity. It's far easier to harvest hemp than the spruce and pine trees that are used at the dwindling number of paper-making companies in Maine.
Winters are brutal in Maine, and production of pulp is thus almost universally lower for almost half the year.
Yes. It's going to find it's niche. It is a marvelous plant that will benefit the human race and the planet on many levels. It has been a very slow ramp up but we are getting there. I am looking for a way to invest currently.
When it comes to the environment, I'm all about stewardship. That means taking care of the planet in meaningful ways. Far too many leftwing environmental programs are feel-good measures that have no beneficial effect or, in some cases, actually make the situation worse.
How many hydroelectric projects have been stopped because envirowackos were determined to "protect" a subspecies of fish or frog?
I couldn't agree with you more on this. We need to get practical and work in concert with nature to find the balance. Check out "The Biggest Little Farm" for something that someone is trying (and which was predictably pilloried by those who have given up on possibility). I found it inspiring. Why couldn't we move farming toward increased biodiversity and away from monoculture? At least enough to keep the soil in good shape and capture more water in underground aquifers.
"How many hydroelectric projects have been stopped because envirowackos were determined to "protect" a subspecies of fish or frog?"
None, as far as I know. You seem to be referring to the one case that so many people "know" about*- from 1979, the Tellico Dam project that was delayed due to the lack of an environmental impact statement. The "snail darter" case.
[ *This is just a guess; I get to do that, since you've supplied no information other than a rhetorical question.]
Can the anti-ecological wacko Right Wing stop dining out on this case, already? It's been 43 years.
As for more big hydroelectric dams in California: it's a pipe dream. Those dams have already been built. There are no more sites for megadam projects. I keep having to explain this to people who haven't even bothered to consult a topographic map (much less knowing what the Yolo Bypass is, and why it exists.)
I also keep having to inform people that dams are useless is there's no water to fill the reservoirs. The reason that California's reservoirs are often over-topped in the winter and at 20% of capacity by mid-summer is because the Sierras no longer hold snowpack into the summer. Even when there are wet winter seasons, there's too much rain and not enough snow. You get what rain does to snow, hmm? This is due to anthropocentric global warming, that thing that partisan Right Wing ignoramuses still insist on ridiculing**.
California definitely does need more water storage, in the form of pumped underground storage, cisterns, and dams- particularly coffer dams at high elevations, which will increasingly be needed to feed headwater streams (and the larger rivers and reservoirs they feed) in the absence of snowpack. These are projects that require the input of both engineers and life sciences people- collaborating with each other, not fighting with each other. Each side will need to give some ground- we all need to start thinking in terms of Us, not Ours vs. Theirs.
Some of these smaller hydro projects might conceivably be able to generate usable amounts of electricity. Not very much, though; for that, we need nuclear power.
[ **Left-wing ignoramuses have their own problems- on the issue of nuclear power, for example. They might at least read Gwyneth Craven's book Power To Save The World, or Whole Earth Discipline, by Stewart Brand, along with Michael Shellenberger's book Apocalypse Never. But almost nobody reads actual books on these subjects any more, they get their information from talking points in e-leaflets. ]
Look stud I get that you think you are intellectually superior to the rest of us buffoons, ignoramses, etc. but you do not "have" to explain anything to us, rather you have a need to do so. As far as "anti-ecological wacko Right-Wing" BS get over yourself. What we know about climate is in its infancy. It has only been a course of study here for 50 years. We have no reliable data beyond 300 or so years and that was isolated information. Oh I know, the ice cores, the ice cores!!!! But that data is stagnant as to time and place as well. Literal drops in the bucket of climate. Climate changes. That is what it does. If it changes too much our species might not make it. I suspect that if we survive another millenia you clowns will be viewed as just that. Now here is a flash for you. You enviro whackadoodles need us common folk to cooperate with you. I rarely speak for others but I am gonna go out on a limb here and say we will not be dictated to by you psuedo-intellectual elitists so if you want our help you better learn to play nice. Fast. I suspect Michael Schellenberger has figured that out.
You would be wrong. I actually have not stated an opinion on climate issues except hydro-electric. And I stand by my comment about who needs whom and who needs to play nicely. Shrilly denigrating people like a petulant child is not an effective strategy. Never has been, never will be.
A term that I have no use for, from a movie that isn't nearly as profound as it pretends to be...but nonetheless, "redpilled" seems to have caught on, for the moment. Not that the meaning is entirely clear, but it's most often used as a general designation for a 180 flip in someone's views away from conventional bien pensant liberal orthodoxy, toward the "alt-right."
I'm fine with having unorthodox views. I'm exceedingly wary of 180 flips. And also of the pretension inherent in imagining that reactive disillusionment inspires some higher form of consciousness, when it's almost always more like a shift from somnambulistic assent to one set of illusions into a somnambulistic assent to an opposing set of illusions.
I am aware of the origin of the term."red-pill." In the common vernacular at this point it is used by those on the right (I don't know what "alt-right" is) to signify those on the left who need to take the red-pill to see the error of their political ways or those who have been red-pilled and see the error of their former leftist idealogy. While in normal circumstances I too am leary of those who suddenly change in a major way, in the current political climate I think it is necessary. It is the only way back to the m8ddle ground. Plus your entire schtick is to convince people you are correct so you need some flippers. You don't have unorthodox views. You sound like a typical libertarian to me. You have poor communication skills is all. And the use of big words in a complex sentence does not disguise that.
Sorry, but I couldn't let this one slip by before I call it a day.
You're delusional if You think redpilled is the opposite side-a the coin with "Woke." I won't say there are *no* similarities, but I don't think many here would agree with that.
Thing is, I don't think You've studied the Woke Religion very seriously, or mebbe You just don't *take* them seriously.
"Institutional capture" comes up in several different contexts. But a lotta people don't know that when it comes to institutional capture, the Woke have cornered the market.
And I'd be curious about where "the pretension inherent in imagining that reactive disillusionment inspires some higher form of consciousness" comes from. Seems to come outta left field, to me anyway.
And this?
"when it's almost always more like a shift from somnambulistic assent to one set of illusions into a somnambulistic assent to an opposing set of illusions."
I'm glad to "hear" You say "almost." But that doesn't quite fit the bill. Until You quit going along a somnambulistic assent to Your *own* views, which some would call illusions, I wouldn't call the kettle black.
If You wanna learn something about the Woke, lemme know. I proclaim myself to be a SME on the topic.
Then again, that'd be for tomorrow. And I try to make it a point not to say I'll do something until the time comes I'm doing it. So mebbe tomorrow, mebbe not. Besides, the comments on this article have died down to a point that none-a that may be necessary anyWay.
I am "common folk", too, Lynne. I've never made any claim of intellectual superiority. That's your insecurity speaking.
(Or, since I suspect that you don't actually believe that, it's a turf claim: you're casting the opinions you oppose as "Elitist" ones, and those you agree with represent those of a Champion of the Common People.)
People with minimal knowledge on a given topic who insist that their opinions have just as much merit as someone who has paid the dues to study the subject are fronting phonies. It's like hearing someone insist that bent-knee pushups are just as strengthening as pull-ups, and then acting all offended when someone points out that they aren't.
Consider that all you have to offer on the topic of climate change is some tired nonsense about ice cores. We're over hockey stick graphs here, and well into easily observable changes. They might not be all that noticeable on the Texas border- although I'd bet that if you bothered to look, you might find more differences than you think. But you don't have to travel very far to find places that just aren't what they used to be, in ways that many climate scientists were predicting over 30 years ago.
No you are not a common folk. Common folk do not denigrate people as you do. They present their POV with humility. There are many examples of that in the Common Sense threads. Nor am I speaking out of insecurity. I found the tone of your comments arrogant and demeaning. It is my nature to speak out for those being mistreated so I did. It is true I am not a climate scientist but I have read a fair amount on the topic over many years to try to understand climate, at least to the extent any of us can do so. I do observe changes in my lifetime, I just do not pretend to have an explanation nor do I believe you have one. You are entirely too strident in your tone to be persuasive.
Well jt already did, so bless him. My response would be to engage in some original thought and figure it out. You like to read right? I predict that your thought when you read my question will be an automatic "not what you write" at which I have won this argument that you are indeed elitist.
Well, since Your two previous posts are directly above, I didn't think it was necessary to put what I quoted "in context." Okay:
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MascotWrites Iconoclasms ·May 17 ·edited 14 hr ago
I am "common folk", too, Lynne. I've never made any claim of intellectual superiority. That's your insecurity speaking.
(Or, since I suspect that you don't actually believe that, it's a turf claim: you're casting the opinions you oppose as "Elitist" ones, and those you agree with represent those of a Champion of the Common People.)
People with minimal knowledge on a given topic who insist that their opinions have just as much merit as someone who has paid the dues to study the subject are fronting phonies. It's like hearing someone insist that bent-knee pushups are just as strengthening as pull-ups, and then acting all offended when someone points out that they aren't.
Consider that all you have to offer on the topic of climate change is some tired nonsense about ice cores. We're over hockey stick graphs here, and well into easily observable changes. They might not be all that noticeable on the Texas border- although I'd bet that if you bothered to look, you might find more differences than you think. But you don't have to travel very far to find places that just aren't what they used to be, in ways that many climate scientists were predicting over 30 years ago.
--------------------------
That's the context, right there Mascot. Then You wrote:
"Quote me the statements of mine that you found offensive, verbatim. Then we can have a cogent discussion."
And that's EXACTLY what I did. Mebbe You were expecting me to quote entire sentences. If so, that wasn't clearly stated. And, besides, wouldn't have highlighted the phrases that were the insulting part. So I think my reply was actually MORE than sufficient.
Thank you, Lynne. Ordinarily I don't respond to Mascot because of his troll-like arrogance, but his assertions here needed a response. You saved me from that.
The only place you "demolished my insinuations" was in your own arrogant mind. I have more I could have said about the issue in question, but you have demonstrated yourself to be someone who always has to be right (in your own mind) and always has to have the last word. And I am far from the only person here who has noted your arrogance.
That places you firmly in the troll column, regardless of whether trolling is your intention or not. I meet trolls with the silence they deserve, and I encourage others to do the same.
You're declining to "say more about the issue in question", yet you have time to make it all about me. Got it. That seems to be a popular misdirection tactic in my reply threads.
I am a big fan of nuclear power. The new generations of reactors are far safer and more fuel efficient than the early models with which we're familiar. I'd like to populate the nation with these small, modern reactors, and decommission the oldies. (Then open the Yucca Mountain waste facility we spent billions of tax dollars to build, and use it.) Nuclear energy is the most reliable and least carbon-footprinty energy source out there, and this liberal votes to Get On With It Already. Build the reactors, get them on line, and keep improving everything else. My Illinois relies heavily on reactors for power, so I have no NIMBY issue--they work fine.
Nuclear, hydro, oil, gas, wind, solar, bacteria farts; all have a place in filling the power grid. But none can do it alone.
"Nuclear, hydro, oil, gas, wind, solar, bacteria farts; all have a place in filling the power grid. But none can do it alone."
I want to thank you, William, for providing my morning chuckle. You had me at bacteria farts.
Your final sentence is one of the best I have ever seen in terms of summing up what we really need to do if we want to live in a 1st world country where folks truly want the poorest among them to also thrive.
Don't be an Aliterate, man. And don't stop with reading only one book, either. Being well-read is imperative to knowing what you're talking about. There are no shortcuts.
There are plenty of shortcuts that allow people who don't have the faintest idea of what they're talking about to go on and talk anyway. I have to admit that much.
Arrogance has nothing to do with it. I actually think it's pretty pathetic that I have to be the one to say it.
Seriously, exactly what is it that's being "arrogant" here? A pseudonym, connected to a little photo of a coffee cup?
Mascot is fed up, is all.
For example, I'm tired of being the comment writer who has to bring a contextual fact base to New York Times articles that could easily have included the exact same information by accessing the same data from less than an hour's worth of keyword searches. Believe me, I never dreamed that I'd have to be the person to do something like that. Aren't there well-paid professionals hired to carry out tasks like those? Isn't there anybody else out there who can play this game?
If my goal in doing that was the self-aggrandizement attendant to the dubious ambition of being a Big Playah in New York Times Comments, I'd at least use my proper name, hmm? At minimum, I'd be out to burnish My Rep by using the same screen name in every news forum, no?
I'm a random pseudonymous content provider. Gratis. No charge.
And that's what really grates on me: in one of my comments elsewhere in this discussion, I dropped links to four books. Anyone who reads the fourth book on the list- and the sections about Mexico in the first book on the list- would get an awful lot of questions about the current mess on The Border answered in abundant detail. Including, perhaps, questions they had never even thought to ask.
Instead, when I read a discussion on that topic, as a rule it's obvious that I'm wading through a litany of complaints by a commentariat with a knowledge base that gives little evidence of extending back any further than the Obama administration. It's also glaringly apparent that few of the posters know much of anything beyond TV clips, four-paragraph news articles, and opinions handed to them by their favorite Thought Leaders. How much respect am I supposed to have for poorly informed opinions?
So much for my detractors. I can attest from repeated experience that they'd rather write paragraphs of excuses why they don't need to/they don't have to/I can't make them read a book or two, than actually attempting any of the experiments I've politely suggested. Yes, I used to be a lot more polite. But at this point I've realized that if people are being that petty, that thin-skinned and defended about their aliteracy, I don't think adding Extra Humility on top would help. In all the years I've brought up those books in discussions like these, I can't recall ever reading a comment by anyone else who makes any mention of them.
I'm tired of it, that's all. I'm tired of a country of Breaking Bad fans who can summarize every plot twist of the series, but who wouldn't know Carlos Sicilia Falcon, Miguel Nazar Haro, or Raul Salinas from Fernando Valenzuela. I'm weary of all the hip literati who know Hunter Thompson, Hunter Thompson, Hunter Thompson, but they've never read a single book by Charles Bowden.
But Mascot here has no plans to leave, either. Never been banned from a board, never been chased off of one. What's there to chase off?
You know - the people commenting here are civilians and some of them have jobs. Not everyone has time to perform indepth research. But that doesn't stop people from having opinions - and never will. We are all only partially informed any time we form an opinion or vote because - other priorities. That's just life. You can grouse about it but I am guessing you would get more buy-in for your efforts if you were a bit more patient and positive. That's all. You be you.
This isn't the first time I've heard that line. It gets less convincing every year. I'd have more sympathy for the excuses if most Americans didn't have the largest information resource in history at their fingertips. Most of them continue to squander it.
The "in-depth research" of a couple of keyword searches is a matter of a few minutes. Finding and ordering a book from anywhere in the country through interlibrary loan to be sent to a local borrowing library- to read for free- takes about the same amount of time. Register at archive.org, and you can get a lot of books to borrow for 14 days and read for free on your computer right away. Including all four of the books on the list I mentioned, which can be found in one of my other posts in this discussion.
How do I find the time to read so much? Take a guess.
And then there's Tik-Tok. From a NY Times article by Ezra Klein from May 8 of this year:
"...TikTok, as we know it today, is only a few years old. But its growth is like nothing we’ve seen before. In 2021, it had more active users than Twitter, more U.S. watch minutes than YouTube, more app downloads than Facebook, more site visits than Google. The app is best known for viral dance trends, but there was a time when Twitter was 140-character updates about lunch orders and Facebook was restricted to elite universities. Things change. Perhaps they have already changed. A few weeks ago, I gave a lecture at a Presbyterian college in South Carolina, and asked some of the students where they liked to get their news. Almost every one said TikTok..." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/08/opinion/tiktok-twitter-china-bytedance.html
I think that reading that article is what set me off, Lightwing. Why should I be expected to indulge that level of obliviousness- just because everyone else does? Isn't there enough pandering going on? Nobody can be bothered to read a few nonfiction history books a year, and then they feel entitled to get upset when I point out their pitiful knowledge command of a current events topic?
"that doesn't stop people from having opinions"
As it happens, there are a lot of topics where I consider myself uninformed, poorly informed, or just plain out of my depth. In those cases, I typically don't feel entitled to even have an opinion, much less publicly stating one. Instead, I shut up and listen. Including on my Substack subscriptions, where there are a lot of stories and topic discussions that I read but I don't comment on, because I don't have anything to say.
I dare you to read one book on my list. This book.
"Nobody can be bothered to read a few nonfiction history books a year, and then they feel entitled to get upset when I point out their pitiful knowledge command of a current events topic?"
People have different styles of learning, right? Not everyone enjoys reading books. IMO, their curiosity to read books is snuffed out during primary education. Not necessarily on them, personally.
Why should I repeatedly point out Your pitiful knowledge of people? Why should I put it in terms of "pitiful" knowledge?
People have different styles of thinking. Building up from the details of a lotta factoids is one. And it's a good way to build strong arguments. I know that all opinions aren't equally based on the facts.
But a lotta the work is in determining which are facts and which are opinions, right? And sometimes One has-ta look at what's not said, as opposed to what's said.
I guess what I'm saying is that You and I, friend, have a decidedly left-hemisphere Way of looking at things. It's a powerful tool, but a lousy master, right?
Gimme a break, Mascot. All I *do* read is Substacks and books. Too much time commenting on Substacks is the problem. I've bought 1,000 books over the past two or three years. Enough to keep me busy for the rest-a my life.
But thanks for the lecture on how aliterate I am. Admit I started late, just in the past year. But I'm making up for lost time as fast as I can.
You seem to be laboring under the misconception that the participants in these discussions are here to give Public Relations press briefings.
I'm not in a political comments page to soft-soap anyone. I get that Rush Limbaugh built his loyal audience on the radio by flattering them with praise for their superior intelligence and insight, but he was praising his following for already sharing general agreement with his political views.
If someone tries that game with me, I get suspicious.
Fuck "style points." There's entirely too much proudly asserted ignorance in this discussion to be fussily polite about noting its prevalence. Someone has to say it.
I'm fine with everything in my comments being ignored- as long as the reader takes my book recommendations, and reads them all the way through. That this is probably too much to ask- even of college-educated Americans- goes a long way toward explaining the mess that we're in right now.
Regular posters in these discussions regularly pour more vitriol on their name-checked political opponents than any of the content found in any of my comments.
Oh, how they can dish it out. But they get all offended at anyone who points out how flimsy their knowledge base is- or who offers sincere advice on how to help with that problem.
True. There are indeed trolls but they are largely ignored. I was specifically referencing your tone to jt. You clearly have merit to your position. It will be better received without the antagonism and you seem to want be persuasive. The first rule of persuasion is know your audience. The second is don't piss it off with your opening salvo. There are of course exceptions and corollaries. I can dish and take so I am not intimidated. I look forward to the conversation. Just don't load me up with links. That usually foreshadows a lack of original thought.
Completely disagree on links. If someone isn't occasionally backing up their views with references- most readily accessible as links- I take it as an indication that they got nothing. Especially when specific factual claims are made. (I don't object when I know someone is making accurate fact claims, of course. But an argument is always stronger with reference support.)
This conversation isn't exclusive to us. It's public. If you don't want to read my links, it's your loss. But I post for anyone who might run across my comments. And my links are there for anyone to fact-check, to evaluate how I'm supporting my points.
"t will be better received without the antagonism and you seem to want be persuasive. The first rule of persuasion is know your audience"
I know my "audience" of participants here; it's heavily comprised of smug, arrogant people who post boilerplate sneers rather than informative posts, and who have no hesitation about libeling anyone who disagrees with them. Many of them wear their wooden-headed ignorance as if it were some great personal achievement.
I'm not here to persuade them; I'm here to persuade the lurkers. Whenever they might happen to show up, now or in the future.
I reread all the posts here and noticed a piece of illogic on Your part, Mascot. Observe the phrase:
"I know my "audience" of participants here; it's heavily comprised of smug, arrogant people who post boilerplate sneers rather than informative posts, and who have no hesitation about libeling anyone who disagrees with them."
As often happens, You commit Your own error. Your are most certainly libeling a lotta people who disagree with You, right? I "hear" You already. You know what is informative (to YOU) and what is not (to YOU). BTW, did You check my links? Or were You hypocritical about checking links, too?
But I feel the same about you - smug and arrogant, to which I would add elitist, condescending and petulant. Then you double down with direct insults. You really have a lot to learn. Your people skills are atrocious. Lastly your comment is non-sensical - you know your audience of thugs . . . but that is not who you are trying to persuade? But you do want to persuade the lurkers? Then that is your target audience, fool. And additional evidence of your ivory tower elitism. Persuading the lurkers too timid to speak up. (No offense to timid people, this can be a tough crowd.)
"Many of them wear their wooden-headed ignorance as if it were some great personal achievement."
Here's the thing: *ALL* of us are wooden-headed and ignorant. The problem, in this particular case, is that You don't think You are.
In a lotta respects You're very well informed. But as long as condescension is the main artillery You're gonna use, then You're wooden-headed.
Me? I got no problem admitting I'm an ignoramoose on a whole *host*-a things. Because I look *ahead* at what I want to know, as opposed to what I *do* know. (Keeps me young, if for no other reason.)
My point? Why imitate the intellectually arrogant? Who gains?
Exactly, Celia. Cali just killed a desalinization plant in Huntington Beach after years of litigation. The state is on water rationing (unless you're the Delta Smelt) and the housing authorities compel housing mandates, overwriting local community building codes. What about the shortage of water and adding millions of new housing units? The state has decided not to link water availability to new housing construction. You can't make this stuff up.
That's the thing, isn't it--these decisions are being made by Leftist politicians, without regard to whether or not they will work. It's all about what makes people feel good.
The "delta smelt" is a dismissive shorthand for the brackish water ecosystem of the Sacramento Delta, a much wider regional wetland that has many more species than a "3-inch fish", and has no business being converted into dried out salt water marsh.
And don't kid yourself. The Sacramento Delta is on water rationing, too.
The amount of water that desalination plants can presently produce is...not very much. I'm hopeful that nanotechnology will be able to transform the process, but that remains to be seen. And you're always going to have the byproduct of brine concentrate at the other end. Too much salt is a killer, and dispersing it with sufficient dilution that it doesn't upend the food chain in the oceans is an expensive proposition.
(good lord, wasn't any of this covered in high school biology class?)
I'd like to think there's a tech fix for the toxic brine problem (isn't there some way to convert all of that sodium chloride solution into a battery of some sort?) but we aren't there yet.
You may some good points, Mascot, but you may not know what's happened to farmers in the Central Valley in recent years. I farmed there and know farmers there. It was once the "breadbasket of the world" and is slowly becoming a desert in many areas. So sad. The huge Sacramento River and San Joaquin River empty into San Francisco Bay - why aren't we capturing some of that water? As to desal, the Carlsbad plant provides 10% of all water for San Diego County, 3.3m people. Southern California also has a pretty good reservoir system, which the northern part of the state generally lacks. You're right the brine is an issue and dispersion can only do so much. Researchers at MIT say you can make sodium hydroxide using excess brine.
"Southern California also has a pretty good reservoir system, which the northern part of the state generally lacks."
That's just plain factually incorrect. All it takes it looking at a state map. Moving water from reservoirs in the North to the southern part of the state was the entire purpose of the California Water Project. Which was pioneered by Jerry Brown's father Pat Brown. (A Democrat, for those of you keeping score- although judging by the partisan bent of the majority of the participants in this comment section, you'll drop all that history down the memory hole, in service to your idols.)
"The huge Sacramento River and San Joaquin River empty into San Francisco Bay - why aren't we capturing some of that water?"
A sizeable amount of that water is captured already. That's what the Delta pumps do. We need to figure out how to retain more of it upriver, so it stays in reservoirs through the growing season. But the solution is more about a lot of little projects than a few great big ones, and it's going to take some years.
"you may not know what's happened to farmers in the Central Valley in recent years. I farmed there and know farmers there. It was once the "breadbasket of the world" and is slowly becoming a desert in many areas."
I used to live in the Central Valley. I realize that many of the farmers have problems with water access. But blaming the Delta Smelt is easy. (It also neglects the economic interests who benefit from that water, like the commercial and sport fishing and tourism industries.) I rarely hear anyone talk about the access to the aquifer, or about shifting to crops with less water demand, or wasteful irrigation practices. https://thecounter.org/small-farmers-water-for-profit-kings-county-california-san-joaquin-valley/
Sean Hannity isn't going to do a story like the one in the link above. (I mention Hannity because more than once I've heard him ranting about the farmers in the Central Valley having their water stolen by a 3-inch fish, and other canards.)
The bottom line is that California is facing long-term drought conditions. What used to work just fine isn't working as well.
" As to desal, the Carlsbad plant provides 10% of all water for San Diego County, 3.3m people."
But that's hardly anything, in the grand context of water use in California. The equivalent of the water supply for 330,000 people, in a state of 40 million people. I mean, I support desalination, if it's done right. But there are serious challenges, and it can only do so much. I ran various numbers on the Carlsbad plant back when it was being built (anyone can do this, by asking a few pointed questions- this is the Internet!) The construction cost and physical footprint was considerable. (Much more than most nuclear power plants, fwiw.)
We could go on and on... For example, the cost of the Carlsbad desal plant mushroomed due to roughly 10 years of litigation. I'm not sure what Sean Hannity has to do with our discussion or why you mentioned him at all. But we both agree that desal can play a role, nuclear should play a much larger role, and farmers in the Central Valley do not have the water they need. I'd be interested in how you reconcile California's housing mandates and open door immigration policy with the water constraints we are facing.
I mentioned Hannity for the benefit of fellow Fox News watchers like myself...I admit that it's been a few years since I tuned in to his show, but I recall that as one of the axes he most liked to grind. Like it was part of his marching orders.
The water constraints are a much bigger problem than California- particularly because we don't know how much worse the climate shift is going to be for the American West. Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Utah...
Maybe those states will have to limit immigration. Including interstate immigration, within the US.
Still and all, it has to be said that agriculture uses most of California's water, and there's still considerable belt-tightening to be done in that regard. Although not inexpensively. The farmers can't afford to be stuck with the bill for that, it's all of our problem- including the Federal level, because it isn't only Californians who rely on Central Valley agriculture. But an ambitious publicly funded water conservation irrigation program makes infinitely more sense than spending billions on another dam. Dams don't increase rainfall. That's cargo cult thinking- even if there were sites, which there aren't. And demanding more water from the Sacramento Delta is a desperation move based on a foreshortened time horizon. The farmers are just trying to get through another year. Farming nurtures that sort of annual-returns perspective. But 20 years down the line, when the policy fail will be complete, a formerly well-functioning aquatic ecosystem will be devastated in a way that would probably require at least a century to even partially restore, and the Central Valley is liable to face a scary amount of salt water intrusion. https://www.watereducation.org/post/salinity-central-valley-critical-problem
I don't like this reality either. I detest it. But it isn't to be denied.
I generally agree. As you pointed out earlier, massive global population growth - which everyone seems to be afraid to talk about- is putting all kinds of pressure on our ecosystem, notably including water and our oceans.
Meanwhile California would have lots of water to ride through droughts except they release so much to support these ecosystems. Looking like you cannot have both.
"Meanwhile California would have lots of water to ride through droughts except they release so much to support these ecosystems."
First of all, that's bullshit Twitterspeak. You can't support it. Claims asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence; the only reason I'm bothering to respond to your idiocy at all is that gullible people read comments like those and swallow them whole.
Secondly, you're evidently unaware of what natural ecosystems in good working order on this planet actually do for the human species: they keep us alive. They're as important as our lungs, or our livers.
I see your point regarding the value of our natural ecosystems. The planet, its peoples and all of its ecosystems are in my prayer every night. Course I knew that before the bat-shit crazy environmentalists rose to the forefront. But those ecosystems will not do "us" any good without adequate drinking water, the food it makes possible and the power, currently electricity, to make shelter. Then there is the never-ending litany of creature comforts. To all of these problems you throw open the border and shout y'all come! Thereby needlessly and foolishly (IMO) increasing the demand on our already overwhelmed system(s). Meanwhile the elites are already making plans to escape to New Zealand , etc. I think we have some decisions to make.
I take most of those points. But the water distribution problem in California is not to be reduced to "adequate drinking water" vs. "the health of the Sacramento River delta." That particular issue comes down to agricultural practices, specifically, growing appropriate crops in the Central Valley that don't have such an enormous water demand and/or implementing more intensive water conservation with irrigation technology.
"To all of these problems you throw open the border and shout y'all come!"
No one in the mainstream of the Democratic Party is doing that. The Democrats have sent a lot of mixed messages on that issue, because they promise everything to everybody. But we don't have an open border policy with Mexico.
Unfortunately, most of that immigration problem can ultimately be traced to second and third-order impacts of the War On Drugs. It's what happens when the can gets kicked down the road for half a century, by administrations and Congresses of both parties.
Read Murder City by the late Charles Bowden, the best American journalist of my lifetime. And when you get to the end of it, reflect on the fact that it's been another 15 damn years since he researched and wrote that book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bowden
But, fuck it, this country is full to the gunwales with Aliterate know-it-alls who can't be bothered.
Archive.org books are free to borrow with a simple registration, and as easy to read as Kindle, at least on a grownup computer: size it up, and start turning pages.
Thank you for the moderate tone. I believe both sides have merit to their arguments and both are aodeeply entrenched there is not much (desperately needed) middle ground. I do not believe in the ability of the government to fix this. I frankly do not care what happens to Cali. I am bitter because my neck of the woods is being invaded by those fleeing her. My mother used to say "[W]here ever you go, there you are.]" meaning your problems are with you and if you move without fixing the problem fist you take it with you. And my neck of the woods is hot and dry and a population boom is not good. The California border may not be open, but the Texas one is, to the detriment of the landowners and populations of the border towns. If you are correct that there are not massive crossings in Cali you have sparked my curiosity. I fear Texas is being punished for its red-state values. I agree that the War on Drugs is a fiasco, and you may well be tight that it is for other nations also. But we cannot absorb the populations of every poor, corrupt nation. The WonD was instituted to stamp out demand because the Narco countries said they could not control supply because of American demand. It might have been well-intended but it certainly had undesirable consequences aplenty. Private prisons indeed.
California's border has been open since 1848- to immigrants from the rest of the US. I'd venture that around half of the chronic dysfunctional homeless population only arrived on the West Coast within the last 20 years.
"The Californ8a border may not be open, but the Texas one is."
" I am bitter because my neck of the woods is being invaded by them."
You're only looking at the last thing that just happened. You don't get that most of the Mexicans and Central Americans don't want to "invade" the US. Mexican states like Michoacan are natural paradises; if it weren't for the illicit drug economy and cartel rule, no one would want to leave permanently. But their homes have been made uninhabitable by gangsters grown wealthy on decades of Prohibition price supports. And now, after decades of War in the countryside, the residents are fleeing. It isn't that Texas or California has "open borders" as a policy, there's just too many people to stop.
This was all predictable, to anyone paying attention. But all I can do about that here is offer some background reading, to get literate people to broaden their knowledge base on the subject. Instead of being led around by the nose, by a clueless haphazard news cycle that ignores everything other than the most recent Drama.
"I fear Texas is being punished for its red-state values."
In regard to the immigrant situation, neither Texas or California is being "punished" by anything other than the facts of their physical geography- Sun Belt states that have wide borders with Mexico.
There's a bigger question here, in the long run- and it's one that few people devote much discussion to: the human population of the planet has added 4 billion people in the last 40 years. We're on track to add at least another 2 billion in the next 40 years. I get that people can't just move wherever they want, but as far as the big picture, things are not going to stop changing on that score. For that matter, the pressures of population increase, immigration, and refugees in the Western hemisphere are much lower than what the Eastern hemisphere will be facing.
2 things - 1) hydro is as clean as it gets; 2) is it wise to preserve every species? After all how many millions of species have come and gone. What are we doing to the balance of life by insisting on preservation of all? Is this not merely an (IMO impossible) attempt to maintain a static status quo?
That desire for some kind of extinction-free status quo is one of the least rational aspects of envirowackoism. It ignores millions of years of natural history in which humans played no part.
Hydroelectric dams have their own set of problems. Although it's a moot point in this country, because almost every site of any size has already been dammed. Many of the biggest projects had a heavy component of "boondoggle" in them. Read Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner. A book (yeah, another BOOK) containing material that should be taught in every high school classroom in the American West.
I think focusing ecological concerns on a handful of endangered species is missing the forest for the trees. Environmental policy routinely overlooks massive degradation of vast regional ecosystems where no endangered species are present. But if the degradation continues, entire food chains are liable to collapse.
I’m going to read it thanks for info this green story is the gaslight of the 21st century the Arabs and Russia are loving it look at the price of oil and gas 2 years ago they were pretty much done they couldn’t dump the oil and now we energy dependent don’t have formula the list is endless DJT told us in his term it was a hoax so was the Paris climate Accord and we had the COP in October that was a whitewash until we get proper people in power we are going to continue this downward trend until there is nothing left of us 🥲🥲sadly
The hoax is the fear mongering inciting a premature rejection of oil and gas which if realized can literally bring down the country and the world. A warming planet is real. However the “models” are simply not predictive. Read the actual IPCC docs which are being massively distorted by MSM and political forces.
Thank you for your comment, Chris, although it saddens me that we so poorly train young people who grow up to accept stupid science, and thus join a dangerous mob.
My wife always says "follow the money, honey" when I rant about the ideas being promoted by a transient administration that claims to be able to "save the planet," not in a hundred years from now, but right now!
With the legacy Americans leaving this state in droves, all that is left is the illegal immigrants mooching off the taxes we pay to prop up CA and the legal immigrants who don’t understand our way of life and obediently vote for Newsom and his party.
Yes it’s a frightening invasion we’re undergoing at the full faith and intent of the federal government. Necessary to understand our government as blood sucking parasites trying to take all Americans have left and leave them helpless to resist. It was what our founding ancestors most feared. These parasites in power will go but whether and if we have time to make this abundantly clear to Washington before it all falls apart is an unknown.
What I find more frightening is that many of those leaving are self-interested Leftists who are bringing their destructive politics to the states that haven't been ruined by Progressives yet. The quality of life in the state where I grew up was beginning to be destroyed by Californians over 30 years ago.
I think that the result of Progressive policies is lowering the quality of life in Cali and you'd have to be pretty out of it not to notice. This is going to have an impact at the ballot box. That said, never underestimate the power of the human ego and sanctimony. Like Shellenberger said, they want to "feel good" about themselves no matter the reality they create. You could argue that this is due to the fact that most Progressives are wealthy and are insulated from the real-world impacts of their policies.
No, it was Utah. My husband and I escaped just in time. The rent on the hovel we'd been living in doubled within six months of our leaving.
Utah Valley (where I grew up) used to be largely farmland. Now it is an endless sea of housing developments, from Lehi to Santiquin and from the mountain benches to the shores of Utah Lake (including areas that were underwater in the flood of 1983). There are half a dozen new incorporated cities that did not even exist 30 years ago.
If you want to drive on I-15, you better drive like a maniac. Despite posted speed limits, the typical speed is 80.
I think the over-speeding is a vestige of the lockdowns. Once, while driving on I-40, I was passed by several cars that seemed to be racing, going at least 90 mph, apparently elicited by the absence of cars. It happened several times, actually. … I can’t tell if you like it there in Utah, but I hope so.
No, the over-speeding has been going on since 2002 at least, when I last spent any length of time there, after my mother passed away. I was there again in 2012 to sell the house, and against in 2013 to help my best friend move. Only got worse.
I grew up in Utah, but my husband and I moved to Oregon at the end of '88, to Kansas in '95, and to Iowa in '03.
We did live in Oregon for 7 years after we left Utah. So I saw the destruction that had been wreaked there as well. Fortunately, we lived in a little mountain town. It had its problems, and a few of them originated in California, but it was still a nice place to live in the early 90s.
It was my husband's homesickness for the Midwest that took us away from there. We've thought about going back, but at this point that would be like moving to Pompeii.
They shouldn’t be allowed in they have ruined their environments and then proceed to transport the same crap with them they won’t succeed we know who they are The Clintons Prince and Megan the Gores and of course our favorites the Obamas etc there are plenty others to join that heap!
I hope Shellenberger wins. I suspect he is California's last hope.
He sums up the overall problem--not just with California politicians, but with political leaders all over the U.S--very astutely: "100-percent certain about what they couldn’t know, and weirdly unsure about how to fix things that could be fixed."
California is just an extreme version of what's happening all over the US, especially in the coastal regions where the establishment and elite dominate.
He had me back when "Apocalypse Never" came out, Celia.
My views about the environment might be described as back woods conservationist.
Want to cut down a 100 acres worth of trees to make newsprint? Then you'd better have a program to plant 300 acres worth of new trees, or I'll call you an a** hole.
I eventually bought five more copies of Michael's book, which I lent to five of my best educated friends. The result? Four of the five friends with advanced degrees in medicine, education, and business management read a few chapters and said the book was propaganda and everyone knows renewables are our only hope for saving the planet.
The man who read the book cover to cover was a lawyer who had been one of my best friends for decades, and the only lawyer I knew who had won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
(Yeah for small town lawyers beating the white shoe crowd!)
He thanked me for providing him with a very well written book about a topic he never knew was so important.
He laughed when I suggested he was now one in a thousand in terms of people who truly know how electricity finds its way into our modern lives.
We all suffer from assumptions.
I still love the four friends who have drunk the "renewables" cool aid.
People I love remain loved in spite of their short comings. After all, they still love me after five decades, warts and all.
Now, if only those of us who do not live in the mess that is California could vote by mail, then Michael might stand a chance in the primary🤔
EDIT: I eventually found a good home for those copies of Michael's book by donating them to the public library in Bangor, Maine . . . the same library whose biggest patrons are Steve and Tabitha King.
How about 300 acres of industrial hemp instead? It would result in 20x the fiber.
Unfortunately, Lightwing, I do not know of a paper mill creating newsprint out of hemp. And growing hemp in the far north might not be profitable.
Hemp turned into pulp, however, is used to make specialty paper, such as for cigarettes.
Thank you for your comment.
Admittedly, the resource stream for industrial hemp is in its infancy. It was decriminalized in 2018 nationally and COVID somewhat stalled its use/adoption. But, it will happen.
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/industrial-hemp-market
Thank you for the link, Lightwing. The report was very interesting.
Having spent all of my working life in Maine, I learned a lot about making pulp 😁
Right now, the hemp based pulp will increase in popularity. It's far easier to harvest hemp than the spruce and pine trees that are used at the dwindling number of paper-making companies in Maine.
Winters are brutal in Maine, and production of pulp is thus almost universally lower for almost half the year.
Yes. It's going to find it's niche. It is a marvelous plant that will benefit the human race and the planet on many levels. It has been a very slow ramp up but we are getting there. I am looking for a way to invest currently.
Thanks. Great book that turned me into an environmentalist. Believe it or not.
Dennis...nice story...reminded me of ALL those orange groves in Cal. and Florida, now houses... dealing with the composition. thanks
When it comes to the environment, I'm all about stewardship. That means taking care of the planet in meaningful ways. Far too many leftwing environmental programs are feel-good measures that have no beneficial effect or, in some cases, actually make the situation worse.
How many hydroelectric projects have been stopped because envirowackos were determined to "protect" a subspecies of fish or frog?
I couldn't agree with you more on this. We need to get practical and work in concert with nature to find the balance. Check out "The Biggest Little Farm" for something that someone is trying (and which was predictably pilloried by those who have given up on possibility). I found it inspiring. Why couldn't we move farming toward increased biodiversity and away from monoculture? At least enough to keep the soil in good shape and capture more water in underground aquifers.
"How many hydroelectric projects have been stopped because envirowackos were determined to "protect" a subspecies of fish or frog?"
None, as far as I know. You seem to be referring to the one case that so many people "know" about*- from 1979, the Tellico Dam project that was delayed due to the lack of an environmental impact statement. The "snail darter" case.
[ *This is just a guess; I get to do that, since you've supplied no information other than a rhetorical question.]
Here's the rest of the story: the Tellico Dam was completed. And the snail darter population was relocated to a different nearby river system- the Hiwasee. The snail darter is no longer endangered. A win-win. https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2021-08-31/snail-darter-humble-fish-blocked-dam-no-longer-endangered
Can the anti-ecological wacko Right Wing stop dining out on this case, already? It's been 43 years.
As for more big hydroelectric dams in California: it's a pipe dream. Those dams have already been built. There are no more sites for megadam projects. I keep having to explain this to people who haven't even bothered to consult a topographic map (much less knowing what the Yolo Bypass is, and why it exists.)
I also keep having to inform people that dams are useless is there's no water to fill the reservoirs. The reason that California's reservoirs are often over-topped in the winter and at 20% of capacity by mid-summer is because the Sierras no longer hold snowpack into the summer. Even when there are wet winter seasons, there's too much rain and not enough snow. You get what rain does to snow, hmm? This is due to anthropocentric global warming, that thing that partisan Right Wing ignoramuses still insist on ridiculing**.
California definitely does need more water storage, in the form of pumped underground storage, cisterns, and dams- particularly coffer dams at high elevations, which will increasingly be needed to feed headwater streams (and the larger rivers and reservoirs they feed) in the absence of snowpack. These are projects that require the input of both engineers and life sciences people- collaborating with each other, not fighting with each other. Each side will need to give some ground- we all need to start thinking in terms of Us, not Ours vs. Theirs.
Some of these smaller hydro projects might conceivably be able to generate usable amounts of electricity. Not very much, though; for that, we need nuclear power.
[ **Left-wing ignoramuses have their own problems- on the issue of nuclear power, for example. They might at least read Gwyneth Craven's book Power To Save The World, or Whole Earth Discipline, by Stewart Brand, along with Michael Shellenberger's book Apocalypse Never. But almost nobody reads actual books on these subjects any more, they get their information from talking points in e-leaflets. ]
Look stud I get that you think you are intellectually superior to the rest of us buffoons, ignoramses, etc. but you do not "have" to explain anything to us, rather you have a need to do so. As far as "anti-ecological wacko Right-Wing" BS get over yourself. What we know about climate is in its infancy. It has only been a course of study here for 50 years. We have no reliable data beyond 300 or so years and that was isolated information. Oh I know, the ice cores, the ice cores!!!! But that data is stagnant as to time and place as well. Literal drops in the bucket of climate. Climate changes. That is what it does. If it changes too much our species might not make it. I suspect that if we survive another millenia you clowns will be viewed as just that. Now here is a flash for you. You enviro whackadoodles need us common folk to cooperate with you. I rarely speak for others but I am gonna go out on a limb here and say we will not be dictated to by you psuedo-intellectual elitists so if you want our help you better learn to play nice. Fast. I suspect Michael Schellenberger has figured that out.
I suspect , Lynne, that you don't want them to play nice.
I think you want them to play by your unstated rules.
You would be wrong. I actually have not stated an opinion on climate issues except hydro-electric. And I stand by my comment about who needs whom and who needs to play nicely. Shrilly denigrating people like a petulant child is not an effective strategy. Never has been, never will be.
So woke...
Hardly. I do not so identify.
The right-wing version of Woke is "Redpilled."
A term that I have no use for, from a movie that isn't nearly as profound as it pretends to be...but nonetheless, "redpilled" seems to have caught on, for the moment. Not that the meaning is entirely clear, but it's most often used as a general designation for a 180 flip in someone's views away from conventional bien pensant liberal orthodoxy, toward the "alt-right."
I'm fine with having unorthodox views. I'm exceedingly wary of 180 flips. And also of the pretension inherent in imagining that reactive disillusionment inspires some higher form of consciousness, when it's almost always more like a shift from somnambulistic assent to one set of illusions into a somnambulistic assent to an opposing set of illusions.
I am aware of the origin of the term."red-pill." In the common vernacular at this point it is used by those on the right (I don't know what "alt-right" is) to signify those on the left who need to take the red-pill to see the error of their political ways or those who have been red-pilled and see the error of their former leftist idealogy. While in normal circumstances I too am leary of those who suddenly change in a major way, in the current political climate I think it is necessary. It is the only way back to the m8ddle ground. Plus your entire schtick is to convince people you are correct so you need some flippers. You don't have unorthodox views. You sound like a typical libertarian to me. You have poor communication skills is all. And the use of big words in a complex sentence does not disguise that.
Sorry, but I couldn't let this one slip by before I call it a day.
You're delusional if You think redpilled is the opposite side-a the coin with "Woke." I won't say there are *no* similarities, but I don't think many here would agree with that.
Thing is, I don't think You've studied the Woke Religion very seriously, or mebbe You just don't *take* them seriously.
"Institutional capture" comes up in several different contexts. But a lotta people don't know that when it comes to institutional capture, the Woke have cornered the market.
And I'd be curious about where "the pretension inherent in imagining that reactive disillusionment inspires some higher form of consciousness" comes from. Seems to come outta left field, to me anyway.
And this?
"when it's almost always more like a shift from somnambulistic assent to one set of illusions into a somnambulistic assent to an opposing set of illusions."
I'm glad to "hear" You say "almost." But that doesn't quite fit the bill. Until You quit going along a somnambulistic assent to Your *own* views, which some would call illusions, I wouldn't call the kettle black.
If You wanna learn something about the Woke, lemme know. I proclaim myself to be a SME on the topic.
Then again, that'd be for tomorrow. And I try to make it a point not to say I'll do something until the time comes I'm doing it. So mebbe tomorrow, mebbe not. Besides, the comments on this article have died down to a point that none-a that may be necessary anyWay.
Now Lynne... You just didn't *know* You were an acolyte of the Woke Religion, right?
ROFL. *Now* I've heard everything! You, Woke?! Sheesh.
Gaslighting. I have noted it recently in the press too. And Biden is co-opting MAGA. Doublespeak has arrived along with the Ministry of Truth.
I am "common folk", too, Lynne. I've never made any claim of intellectual superiority. That's your insecurity speaking.
(Or, since I suspect that you don't actually believe that, it's a turf claim: you're casting the opinions you oppose as "Elitist" ones, and those you agree with represent those of a Champion of the Common People.)
People with minimal knowledge on a given topic who insist that their opinions have just as much merit as someone who has paid the dues to study the subject are fronting phonies. It's like hearing someone insist that bent-knee pushups are just as strengthening as pull-ups, and then acting all offended when someone points out that they aren't.
Consider that all you have to offer on the topic of climate change is some tired nonsense about ice cores. We're over hockey stick graphs here, and well into easily observable changes. They might not be all that noticeable on the Texas border- although I'd bet that if you bothered to look, you might find more differences than you think. But you don't have to travel very far to find places that just aren't what they used to be, in ways that many climate scientists were predicting over 30 years ago.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/opinion/india-heat-wave-pakistan-climate-change.html
No you are not a common folk. Common folk do not denigrate people as you do. They present their POV with humility. There are many examples of that in the Common Sense threads. Nor am I speaking out of insecurity. I found the tone of your comments arrogant and demeaning. It is my nature to speak out for those being mistreated so I did. It is true I am not a climate scientist but I have read a fair amount on the topic over many years to try to understand climate, at least to the extent any of us can do so. I do observe changes in my lifetime, I just do not pretend to have an explanation nor do I believe you have one. You are entirely too strident in your tone to be persuasive.
Quote me the statements of mine that you found offensive, verbatim. Then we can have a cogent discussion.
Well jt already did, so bless him. My response would be to engage in some original thought and figure it out. You like to read right? I predict that your thought when you read my question will be an automatic "not what you write" at which I have won this argument that you are indeed elitist.
I can't speak for Lynne, nor would I want to. But for Your edification, Mascot:
"That's your insecurity speaking."
"are fronting phonies"
"tired nonsense"
"if you bothered to look"
Readers can compare my original post in its totality with the phrases you've extracted out of context, and make their own assessments on that score.
Well, since Your two previous posts are directly above, I didn't think it was necessary to put what I quoted "in context." Okay:
--------------------------
MascotWrites Iconoclasms ·May 17 ·edited 14 hr ago
I am "common folk", too, Lynne. I've never made any claim of intellectual superiority. That's your insecurity speaking.
(Or, since I suspect that you don't actually believe that, it's a turf claim: you're casting the opinions you oppose as "Elitist" ones, and those you agree with represent those of a Champion of the Common People.)
People with minimal knowledge on a given topic who insist that their opinions have just as much merit as someone who has paid the dues to study the subject are fronting phonies. It's like hearing someone insist that bent-knee pushups are just as strengthening as pull-ups, and then acting all offended when someone points out that they aren't.
Consider that all you have to offer on the topic of climate change is some tired nonsense about ice cores. We're over hockey stick graphs here, and well into easily observable changes. They might not be all that noticeable on the Texas border- although I'd bet that if you bothered to look, you might find more differences than you think. But you don't have to travel very far to find places that just aren't what they used to be, in ways that many climate scientists were predicting over 30 years ago.
--------------------------
That's the context, right there Mascot. Then You wrote:
"Quote me the statements of mine that you found offensive, verbatim. Then we can have a cogent discussion."
And that's EXACTLY what I did. Mebbe You were expecting me to quote entire sentences. If so, that wasn't clearly stated. And, besides, wouldn't have highlighted the phrases that were the insulting part. So I think my reply was actually MORE than sufficient.
You may disagree, of course. No matter.
I made my assessment. Lynne is correct.
Thank you, Lynne. Ordinarily I don't respond to Mascot because of his troll-like arrogance, but his assertions here needed a response. You saved me from that.
Celia, the post I addressed to you was not a personal attack.
My fact claims merely demolished your insinuations. Try to not take that so personally.
When people catch me out on matters of fact, I own it. Admitting my error has been one of the ways I've learned new information.
The only place you "demolished my insinuations" was in your own arrogant mind. I have more I could have said about the issue in question, but you have demonstrated yourself to be someone who always has to be right (in your own mind) and always has to have the last word. And I am far from the only person here who has noted your arrogance.
That places you firmly in the troll column, regardless of whether trolling is your intention or not. I meet trolls with the silence they deserve, and I encourage others to do the same.
You're declining to "say more about the issue in question", yet you have time to make it all about me. Got it. That seems to be a popular misdirection tactic in my reply threads.
I am a big fan of nuclear power. The new generations of reactors are far safer and more fuel efficient than the early models with which we're familiar. I'd like to populate the nation with these small, modern reactors, and decommission the oldies. (Then open the Yucca Mountain waste facility we spent billions of tax dollars to build, and use it.) Nuclear energy is the most reliable and least carbon-footprinty energy source out there, and this liberal votes to Get On With It Already. Build the reactors, get them on line, and keep improving everything else. My Illinois relies heavily on reactors for power, so I have no NIMBY issue--they work fine.
Nuclear, hydro, oil, gas, wind, solar, bacteria farts; all have a place in filling the power grid. But none can do it alone.
"Nuclear, hydro, oil, gas, wind, solar, bacteria farts; all have a place in filling the power grid. But none can do it alone."
I want to thank you, William, for providing my morning chuckle. You had me at bacteria farts.
Your final sentence is one of the best I have ever seen in terms of summing up what we really need to do if we want to live in a 1st world country where folks truly want the poorest among them to also thrive.
Thanks for this, Dennis. Bacteria farts will save the world, I swear :-)
We need all sources to feed our (heavily upgraded) electrical grid, including things we've not yet imagined, if we want everyone to thrive.
Okay, I actually *bought* Shellenberger's book, to see what the Spiritual angle was about. TY.
But that's no guarantee I'll ever *read* it. Just makes it a *little* more likely is all.
Don't be an Aliterate, man. And don't stop with reading only one book, either. Being well-read is imperative to knowing what you're talking about. There are no shortcuts.
There are plenty of shortcuts that allow people who don't have the faintest idea of what they're talking about to go on and talk anyway. I have to admit that much.
You just can't stop being arrogant, can you? Even if the substance of your comments is decent, your tone sucks.
Arrogance has nothing to do with it. I actually think it's pretty pathetic that I have to be the one to say it.
Seriously, exactly what is it that's being "arrogant" here? A pseudonym, connected to a little photo of a coffee cup?
Mascot is fed up, is all.
For example, I'm tired of being the comment writer who has to bring a contextual fact base to New York Times articles that could easily have included the exact same information by accessing the same data from less than an hour's worth of keyword searches. Believe me, I never dreamed that I'd have to be the person to do something like that. Aren't there well-paid professionals hired to carry out tasks like those? Isn't there anybody else out there who can play this game?
If my goal in doing that was the self-aggrandizement attendant to the dubious ambition of being a Big Playah in New York Times Comments, I'd at least use my proper name, hmm? At minimum, I'd be out to burnish My Rep by using the same screen name in every news forum, no?
I'm a random pseudonymous content provider. Gratis. No charge.
And that's what really grates on me: in one of my comments elsewhere in this discussion, I dropped links to four books. Anyone who reads the fourth book on the list- and the sections about Mexico in the first book on the list- would get an awful lot of questions about the current mess on The Border answered in abundant detail. Including, perhaps, questions they had never even thought to ask.
Instead, when I read a discussion on that topic, as a rule it's obvious that I'm wading through a litany of complaints by a commentariat with a knowledge base that gives little evidence of extending back any further than the Obama administration. It's also glaringly apparent that few of the posters know much of anything beyond TV clips, four-paragraph news articles, and opinions handed to them by their favorite Thought Leaders. How much respect am I supposed to have for poorly informed opinions?
So much for my detractors. I can attest from repeated experience that they'd rather write paragraphs of excuses why they don't need to/they don't have to/I can't make them read a book or two, than actually attempting any of the experiments I've politely suggested. Yes, I used to be a lot more polite. But at this point I've realized that if people are being that petty, that thin-skinned and defended about their aliteracy, I don't think adding Extra Humility on top would help. In all the years I've brought up those books in discussions like these, I can't recall ever reading a comment by anyone else who makes any mention of them.
I'm tired of it, that's all. I'm tired of a country of Breaking Bad fans who can summarize every plot twist of the series, but who wouldn't know Carlos Sicilia Falcon, Miguel Nazar Haro, or Raul Salinas from Fernando Valenzuela. I'm weary of all the hip literati who know Hunter Thompson, Hunter Thompson, Hunter Thompson, but they've never read a single book by Charles Bowden.
But Mascot here has no plans to leave, either. Never been banned from a board, never been chased off of one. What's there to chase off?
"How much respect am I supposed to have for poorly informed opinions?"
The same amount of respect You would like to get from them. Golden Rule?
JT for the win! Nicely done, my friend. 😉
<chuckle> Thx. :-)
You know - the people commenting here are civilians and some of them have jobs. Not everyone has time to perform indepth research. But that doesn't stop people from having opinions - and never will. We are all only partially informed any time we form an opinion or vote because - other priorities. That's just life. You can grouse about it but I am guessing you would get more buy-in for your efforts if you were a bit more patient and positive. That's all. You be you.
This isn't the first time I've heard that line. It gets less convincing every year. I'd have more sympathy for the excuses if most Americans didn't have the largest information resource in history at their fingertips. Most of them continue to squander it.
The "in-depth research" of a couple of keyword searches is a matter of a few minutes. Finding and ordering a book from anywhere in the country through interlibrary loan to be sent to a local borrowing library- to read for free- takes about the same amount of time. Register at archive.org, and you can get a lot of books to borrow for 14 days and read for free on your computer right away. Including all four of the books on the list I mentioned, which can be found in one of my other posts in this discussion.
"other priorities": Americans over 18 spend an average of 4 hours a day watching TV https://www.statista.com/chart/15224/daily-tv-consumption-by-us-adults/
the sample in this 2021 survey spent an average of 5 hours and 42 minutes a day on their phones. https://solitaired.com/screen-time-statistics-2021
How do I find the time to read so much? Take a guess.
And then there's Tik-Tok. From a NY Times article by Ezra Klein from May 8 of this year:
"...TikTok, as we know it today, is only a few years old. But its growth is like nothing we’ve seen before. In 2021, it had more active users than Twitter, more U.S. watch minutes than YouTube, more app downloads than Facebook, more site visits than Google. The app is best known for viral dance trends, but there was a time when Twitter was 140-character updates about lunch orders and Facebook was restricted to elite universities. Things change. Perhaps they have already changed. A few weeks ago, I gave a lecture at a Presbyterian college in South Carolina, and asked some of the students where they liked to get their news. Almost every one said TikTok..." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/08/opinion/tiktok-twitter-china-bytedance.html
I think that reading that article is what set me off, Lightwing. Why should I be expected to indulge that level of obliviousness- just because everyone else does? Isn't there enough pandering going on? Nobody can be bothered to read a few nonfiction history books a year, and then they feel entitled to get upset when I point out their pitiful knowledge command of a current events topic?
"that doesn't stop people from having opinions"
As it happens, there are a lot of topics where I consider myself uninformed, poorly informed, or just plain out of my depth. In those cases, I typically don't feel entitled to even have an opinion, much less publicly stating one. Instead, I shut up and listen. Including on my Substack subscriptions, where there are a lot of stories and topic discussions that I read but I don't comment on, because I don't have anything to say.
I dare you to read one book on my list. This book.
https://archive.org/details/murdercityciudad0005bowd_hyl723
"Nobody can be bothered to read a few nonfiction history books a year, and then they feel entitled to get upset when I point out their pitiful knowledge command of a current events topic?"
People have different styles of learning, right? Not everyone enjoys reading books. IMO, their curiosity to read books is snuffed out during primary education. Not necessarily on them, personally.
Why should I repeatedly point out Your pitiful knowledge of people? Why should I put it in terms of "pitiful" knowledge?
People have different styles of thinking. Building up from the details of a lotta factoids is one. And it's a good way to build strong arguments. I know that all opinions aren't equally based on the facts.
But a lotta the work is in determining which are facts and which are opinions, right? And sometimes One has-ta look at what's not said, as opposed to what's said.
I guess what I'm saying is that You and I, friend, have a decidedly left-hemisphere Way of looking at things. It's a powerful tool, but a lousy master, right?
Gimme a break, Mascot. All I *do* read is Substacks and books. Too much time commenting on Substacks is the problem. I've bought 1,000 books over the past two or three years. Enough to keep me busy for the rest-a my life.
But thanks for the lecture on how aliterate I am. Admit I started late, just in the past year. But I'm making up for lost time as fast as I can.
You basically asked for that one-sentence "lecture", with the comment that elicited my reply.
It doesn't matter how many books you buy. It matters how many you read.
Thank You for another lecture. I'm now enlightened on the subject.
The only question is whether You *intend* to be so insufferable, or You're just lame.
You seem to be laboring under the misconception that the participants in these discussions are here to give Public Relations press briefings.
I'm not in a political comments page to soft-soap anyone. I get that Rush Limbaugh built his loyal audience on the radio by flattering them with praise for their superior intelligence and insight, but he was praising his following for already sharing general agreement with his political views.
If someone tries that game with me, I get suspicious.
No, I'm laboring under the misconception that You want to persuade people Your views are, at the least, tolerable to read.
Phew! You don't pull many punches, Mascot. I assume You know what You're talking about, but You don't get any style points from me.
TY. Hadn't heard-a Craven's book. Not that I have time to read any-a the three, but I can put 'em on a list, on the off-chance.
Fuck "style points." There's entirely too much proudly asserted ignorance in this discussion to be fussily polite about noting its prevalence. Someone has to say it.
I'm fine with everything in my comments being ignored- as long as the reader takes my book recommendations, and reads them all the way through. That this is probably too much to ask- even of college-educated Americans- goes a long way toward explaining the mess that we're in right now.
The very last thing on God's little green earth I would do is take reading recs from you. Style points do indeed matter.
Regular posters in these discussions regularly pour more vitriol on their name-checked political opponents than any of the content found in any of my comments.
Oh, how they can dish it out. But they get all offended at anyone who points out how flimsy their knowledge base is- or who offers sincere advice on how to help with that problem.
I plan to be here all year, get used to it
True. There are indeed trolls but they are largely ignored. I was specifically referencing your tone to jt. You clearly have merit to your position. It will be better received without the antagonism and you seem to want be persuasive. The first rule of persuasion is know your audience. The second is don't piss it off with your opening salvo. There are of course exceptions and corollaries. I can dish and take so I am not intimidated. I look forward to the conversation. Just don't load me up with links. That usually foreshadows a lack of original thought.
Completely disagree on links. If someone isn't occasionally backing up their views with references- most readily accessible as links- I take it as an indication that they got nothing. Especially when specific factual claims are made. (I don't object when I know someone is making accurate fact claims, of course. But an argument is always stronger with reference support.)
This conversation isn't exclusive to us. It's public. If you don't want to read my links, it's your loss. But I post for anyone who might run across my comments. And my links are there for anyone to fact-check, to evaluate how I'm supporting my points.
"t will be better received without the antagonism and you seem to want be persuasive. The first rule of persuasion is know your audience"
I know my "audience" of participants here; it's heavily comprised of smug, arrogant people who post boilerplate sneers rather than informative posts, and who have no hesitation about libeling anyone who disagrees with them. Many of them wear their wooden-headed ignorance as if it were some great personal achievement.
I'm not here to persuade them; I'm here to persuade the lurkers. Whenever they might happen to show up, now or in the future.
I reread all the posts here and noticed a piece of illogic on Your part, Mascot. Observe the phrase:
"I know my "audience" of participants here; it's heavily comprised of smug, arrogant people who post boilerplate sneers rather than informative posts, and who have no hesitation about libeling anyone who disagrees with them."
As often happens, You commit Your own error. Your are most certainly libeling a lotta people who disagree with You, right? I "hear" You already. You know what is informative (to YOU) and what is not (to YOU). BTW, did You check my links? Or were You hypocritical about checking links, too?
But I feel the same about you - smug and arrogant, to which I would add elitist, condescending and petulant. Then you double down with direct insults. You really have a lot to learn. Your people skills are atrocious. Lastly your comment is non-sensical - you know your audience of thugs . . . but that is not who you are trying to persuade? But you do want to persuade the lurkers? Then that is your target audience, fool. And additional evidence of your ivory tower elitism. Persuading the lurkers too timid to speak up. (No offense to timid people, this can be a tough crowd.)
"Many of them wear their wooden-headed ignorance as if it were some great personal achievement."
Here's the thing: *ALL* of us are wooden-headed and ignorant. The problem, in this particular case, is that You don't think You are.
In a lotta respects You're very well informed. But as long as condescension is the main artillery You're gonna use, then You're wooden-headed.
Me? I got no problem admitting I'm an ignoramoose on a whole *host*-a things. Because I look *ahead* at what I want to know, as opposed to what I *do* know. (Keeps me young, if for no other reason.)
My point? Why imitate the intellectually arrogant? Who gains?
Mebbe of interest to some: A 1-hour introduction: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18901042-the-divided-brain-and-the-search-for-meaning
Or better yet, a 12-minute video of Iain McGilchrist: https://youtu.be/dFs9WO2B8uI
Exactly, Celia. Cali just killed a desalinization plant in Huntington Beach after years of litigation. The state is on water rationing (unless you're the Delta Smelt) and the housing authorities compel housing mandates, overwriting local community building codes. What about the shortage of water and adding millions of new housing units? The state has decided not to link water availability to new housing construction. You can't make this stuff up.
That's the thing, isn't it--these decisions are being made by Leftist politicians, without regard to whether or not they will work. It's all about what makes people feel good.
From the article: “Their real goal is control and moralizing and power. Mine is freedom, care, civilization.” I love this.
The "delta smelt" is a dismissive shorthand for the brackish water ecosystem of the Sacramento Delta, a much wider regional wetland that has many more species than a "3-inch fish", and has no business being converted into dried out salt water marsh.
And don't kid yourself. The Sacramento Delta is on water rationing, too.
The amount of water that desalination plants can presently produce is...not very much. I'm hopeful that nanotechnology will be able to transform the process, but that remains to be seen. And you're always going to have the byproduct of brine concentrate at the other end. Too much salt is a killer, and dispersing it with sufficient dilution that it doesn't upend the food chain in the oceans is an expensive proposition.
(good lord, wasn't any of this covered in high school biology class?)
I'd like to think there's a tech fix for the toxic brine problem (isn't there some way to convert all of that sodium chloride solution into a battery of some sort?) but we aren't there yet.
You may some good points, Mascot, but you may not know what's happened to farmers in the Central Valley in recent years. I farmed there and know farmers there. It was once the "breadbasket of the world" and is slowly becoming a desert in many areas. So sad. The huge Sacramento River and San Joaquin River empty into San Francisco Bay - why aren't we capturing some of that water? As to desal, the Carlsbad plant provides 10% of all water for San Diego County, 3.3m people. Southern California also has a pretty good reservoir system, which the northern part of the state generally lacks. You're right the brine is an issue and dispersion can only do so much. Researchers at MIT say you can make sodium hydroxide using excess brine.
"Southern California also has a pretty good reservoir system, which the northern part of the state generally lacks."
That's just plain factually incorrect. All it takes it looking at a state map. Moving water from reservoirs in the North to the southern part of the state was the entire purpose of the California Water Project. Which was pioneered by Jerry Brown's father Pat Brown. (A Democrat, for those of you keeping score- although judging by the partisan bent of the majority of the participants in this comment section, you'll drop all that history down the memory hole, in service to your idols.)
"The huge Sacramento River and San Joaquin River empty into San Francisco Bay - why aren't we capturing some of that water?"
A sizeable amount of that water is captured already. That's what the Delta pumps do. We need to figure out how to retain more of it upriver, so it stays in reservoirs through the growing season. But the solution is more about a lot of little projects than a few great big ones, and it's going to take some years.
"you may not know what's happened to farmers in the Central Valley in recent years. I farmed there and know farmers there. It was once the "breadbasket of the world" and is slowly becoming a desert in many areas."
I used to live in the Central Valley. I realize that many of the farmers have problems with water access. But blaming the Delta Smelt is easy. (It also neglects the economic interests who benefit from that water, like the commercial and sport fishing and tourism industries.) I rarely hear anyone talk about the access to the aquifer, or about shifting to crops with less water demand, or wasteful irrigation practices. https://thecounter.org/small-farmers-water-for-profit-kings-county-california-san-joaquin-valley/
Sean Hannity isn't going to do a story like the one in the link above. (I mention Hannity because more than once I've heard him ranting about the farmers in the Central Valley having their water stolen by a 3-inch fish, and other canards.)
The bottom line is that California is facing long-term drought conditions. What used to work just fine isn't working as well.
https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/
" As to desal, the Carlsbad plant provides 10% of all water for San Diego County, 3.3m people."
But that's hardly anything, in the grand context of water use in California. The equivalent of the water supply for 330,000 people, in a state of 40 million people. I mean, I support desalination, if it's done right. But there are serious challenges, and it can only do so much. I ran various numbers on the Carlsbad plant back when it was being built (anyone can do this, by asking a few pointed questions- this is the Internet!) The construction cost and physical footprint was considerable. (Much more than most nuclear power plants, fwiw.)
We could go on and on... For example, the cost of the Carlsbad desal plant mushroomed due to roughly 10 years of litigation. I'm not sure what Sean Hannity has to do with our discussion or why you mentioned him at all. But we both agree that desal can play a role, nuclear should play a much larger role, and farmers in the Central Valley do not have the water they need. I'd be interested in how you reconcile California's housing mandates and open door immigration policy with the water constraints we are facing.
I mentioned Hannity for the benefit of fellow Fox News watchers like myself...I admit that it's been a few years since I tuned in to his show, but I recall that as one of the axes he most liked to grind. Like it was part of his marching orders.
The water constraints are a much bigger problem than California- particularly because we don't know how much worse the climate shift is going to be for the American West. Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Utah...
Maybe those states will have to limit immigration. Including interstate immigration, within the US.
Still and all, it has to be said that agriculture uses most of California's water, and there's still considerable belt-tightening to be done in that regard. Although not inexpensively. The farmers can't afford to be stuck with the bill for that, it's all of our problem- including the Federal level, because it isn't only Californians who rely on Central Valley agriculture. But an ambitious publicly funded water conservation irrigation program makes infinitely more sense than spending billions on another dam. Dams don't increase rainfall. That's cargo cult thinking- even if there were sites, which there aren't. And demanding more water from the Sacramento Delta is a desperation move based on a foreshortened time horizon. The farmers are just trying to get through another year. Farming nurtures that sort of annual-returns perspective. But 20 years down the line, when the policy fail will be complete, a formerly well-functioning aquatic ecosystem will be devastated in a way that would probably require at least a century to even partially restore, and the Central Valley is liable to face a scary amount of salt water intrusion. https://www.watereducation.org/post/salinity-central-valley-critical-problem
I don't like this reality either. I detest it. But it isn't to be denied.
I generally agree. As you pointed out earlier, massive global population growth - which everyone seems to be afraid to talk about- is putting all kinds of pressure on our ecosystem, notably including water and our oceans.
Meanwhile California would have lots of water to ride through droughts except they release so much to support these ecosystems. Looking like you cannot have both.
"Meanwhile California would have lots of water to ride through droughts except they release so much to support these ecosystems."
First of all, that's bullshit Twitterspeak. You can't support it. Claims asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence; the only reason I'm bothering to respond to your idiocy at all is that gullible people read comments like those and swallow them whole.
Secondly, you're evidently unaware of what natural ecosystems in good working order on this planet actually do for the human species: they keep us alive. They're as important as our lungs, or our livers.
I see your point regarding the value of our natural ecosystems. The planet, its peoples and all of its ecosystems are in my prayer every night. Course I knew that before the bat-shit crazy environmentalists rose to the forefront. But those ecosystems will not do "us" any good without adequate drinking water, the food it makes possible and the power, currently electricity, to make shelter. Then there is the never-ending litany of creature comforts. To all of these problems you throw open the border and shout y'all come! Thereby needlessly and foolishly (IMO) increasing the demand on our already overwhelmed system(s). Meanwhile the elites are already making plans to escape to New Zealand , etc. I think we have some decisions to make.
I take most of those points. But the water distribution problem in California is not to be reduced to "adequate drinking water" vs. "the health of the Sacramento River delta." That particular issue comes down to agricultural practices, specifically, growing appropriate crops in the Central Valley that don't have such an enormous water demand and/or implementing more intensive water conservation with irrigation technology.
"To all of these problems you throw open the border and shout y'all come!"
No one in the mainstream of the Democratic Party is doing that. The Democrats have sent a lot of mixed messages on that issue, because they promise everything to everybody. But we don't have an open border policy with Mexico.
Unfortunately, most of that immigration problem can ultimately be traced to second and third-order impacts of the War On Drugs. It's what happens when the can gets kicked down the road for half a century, by administrations and Congresses of both parties.
Read Murder City by the late Charles Bowden, the best American journalist of my lifetime. And when you get to the end of it, reflect on the fact that it's been another 15 damn years since he researched and wrote that book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bowden
But, fuck it, this country is full to the gunwales with Aliterate know-it-alls who can't be bothered.
Most of the immigration problem is actually traceable to failed states. Spend some time in Latin America and you'll understand.
is that so...
The Underground Empire: Where Crime And Governments Embrace. James Mills. 1986. Free access at https://archive.org/details/undergroundempir0000mill
Inside The League, by Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson. 1986. Free access at
https://archive.org/details/insideleagueshoc00ande
Cocaine Politics: Drugs and Armies in Central America, by Peter Dale Scott. 1991. Free access at
https://archive.org/details/cocainepoliticsd0000scot
Murder City, by Charles Bowden, 2010. Free access at
https://archive.org/details/murdercityciudad0000bowd
Archive.org books are free to borrow with a simple registration, and as easy to read as Kindle, at least on a grownup computer: size it up, and start turning pages.
Er, that's "illiterate", not "Aliterate". Those pesky aliterates.
No, my spelling is correct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliteracy
Thank you for the moderate tone. I believe both sides have merit to their arguments and both are aodeeply entrenched there is not much (desperately needed) middle ground. I do not believe in the ability of the government to fix this. I frankly do not care what happens to Cali. I am bitter because my neck of the woods is being invaded by those fleeing her. My mother used to say "[W]here ever you go, there you are.]" meaning your problems are with you and if you move without fixing the problem fist you take it with you. And my neck of the woods is hot and dry and a population boom is not good. The California border may not be open, but the Texas one is, to the detriment of the landowners and populations of the border towns. If you are correct that there are not massive crossings in Cali you have sparked my curiosity. I fear Texas is being punished for its red-state values. I agree that the War on Drugs is a fiasco, and you may well be tight that it is for other nations also. But we cannot absorb the populations of every poor, corrupt nation. The WonD was instituted to stamp out demand because the Narco countries said they could not control supply because of American demand. It might have been well-intended but it certainly had undesirable consequences aplenty. Private prisons indeed.
California's border has been open since 1848- to immigrants from the rest of the US. I'd venture that around half of the chronic dysfunctional homeless population only arrived on the West Coast within the last 20 years.
"The Californ8a border may not be open, but the Texas one is."
" I am bitter because my neck of the woods is being invaded by them."
You're only looking at the last thing that just happened. You don't get that most of the Mexicans and Central Americans don't want to "invade" the US. Mexican states like Michoacan are natural paradises; if it weren't for the illicit drug economy and cartel rule, no one would want to leave permanently. But their homes have been made uninhabitable by gangsters grown wealthy on decades of Prohibition price supports. And now, after decades of War in the countryside, the residents are fleeing. It isn't that Texas or California has "open borders" as a policy, there's just too many people to stop.
This was all predictable, to anyone paying attention. But all I can do about that here is offer some background reading, to get literate people to broaden their knowledge base on the subject. Instead of being led around by the nose, by a clueless haphazard news cycle that ignores everything other than the most recent Drama.
"I fear Texas is being punished for its red-state values."
In regard to the immigrant situation, neither Texas or California is being "punished" by anything other than the facts of their physical geography- Sun Belt states that have wide borders with Mexico.
There's a bigger question here, in the long run- and it's one that few people devote much discussion to: the human population of the planet has added 4 billion people in the last 40 years. We're on track to add at least another 2 billion in the next 40 years. I get that people can't just move wherever they want, but as far as the big picture, things are not going to stop changing on that score. For that matter, the pressures of population increase, immigration, and refugees in the Western hemisphere are much lower than what the Eastern hemisphere will be facing.
They probably do not realize that the "natural" state is often quite deadly. (See Great CA Flood 1862). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862
Thank you Patricia for providing us such an interesting link.
Likewise TY.
2 things - 1) hydro is as clean as it gets; 2) is it wise to preserve every species? After all how many millions of species have come and gone. What are we doing to the balance of life by insisting on preservation of all? Is this not merely an (IMO impossible) attempt to maintain a static status quo?
I've often wondered this myself.
That desire for some kind of extinction-free status quo is one of the least rational aspects of envirowackoism. It ignores millions of years of natural history in which humans played no part.
Hydroelectric dams have their own set of problems. Although it's a moot point in this country, because almost every site of any size has already been dammed. Many of the biggest projects had a heavy component of "boondoggle" in them. Read Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner. A book (yeah, another BOOK) containing material that should be taught in every high school classroom in the American West.
I think focusing ecological concerns on a handful of endangered species is missing the forest for the trees. Environmental policy routinely overlooks massive degradation of vast regional ecosystems where no endangered species are present. But if the degradation continues, entire food chains are liable to collapse.
Celia, Paul Kingsnorth wrote a great book called "Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist". You would like it. He writes here on Substack too.
I’m going to read it thanks for info this green story is the gaslight of the 21st century the Arabs and Russia are loving it look at the price of oil and gas 2 years ago they were pretty much done they couldn’t dump the oil and now we energy dependent don’t have formula the list is endless DJT told us in his term it was a hoax so was the Paris climate Accord and we had the COP in October that was a whitewash until we get proper people in power we are going to continue this downward trend until there is nothing left of us 🥲🥲sadly
The hoax is the fear mongering inciting a premature rejection of oil and gas which if realized can literally bring down the country and the world. A warming planet is real. However the “models” are simply not predictive. Read the actual IPCC docs which are being massively distorted by MSM and political forces.
But, but .... the "envirowackos" would lose one of their favorite delicacies . . . "wart frog" legs 🙄
ROFL!
I also have recommended the book widely. Lots of the same “propaganda” responses
Thank you for your comment, Chris, although it saddens me that we so poorly train young people who grow up to accept stupid science, and thus join a dangerous mob.
My wife always says "follow the money, honey" when I rant about the ideas being promoted by a transient administration that claims to be able to "save the planet," not in a hundred years from now, but right now!
Good story; well (and sadly) put.
With the legacy Americans leaving this state in droves, all that is left is the illegal immigrants mooching off the taxes we pay to prop up CA and the legal immigrants who don’t understand our way of life and obediently vote for Newsom and his party.
Yes it’s a frightening invasion we’re undergoing at the full faith and intent of the federal government. Necessary to understand our government as blood sucking parasites trying to take all Americans have left and leave them helpless to resist. It was what our founding ancestors most feared. These parasites in power will go but whether and if we have time to make this abundantly clear to Washington before it all falls apart is an unknown.
Which is being promoted nationwide thru the open border policy. The only solution I see is to inform the newcomers.
What I find more frightening is that many of those leaving are self-interested Leftists who are bringing their destructive politics to the states that haven't been ruined by Progressives yet. The quality of life in the state where I grew up was beginning to be destroyed by Californians over 30 years ago.
I think that the result of Progressive policies is lowering the quality of life in Cali and you'd have to be pretty out of it not to notice. This is going to have an impact at the ballot box. That said, never underestimate the power of the human ego and sanctimony. Like Shellenberger said, they want to "feel good" about themselves no matter the reality they create. You could argue that this is due to the fact that most Progressives are wealthy and are insulated from the real-world impacts of their policies.
As someone who fled the left coast, I can tell you that my likelihood of ever voting democratic is less than zero.
But you are probably among those who escaped for political reasons, instead of running away from the mess the politicians you voted for had made.
Indeed.
Was the state Oregon?
No, it was Utah. My husband and I escaped just in time. The rent on the hovel we'd been living in doubled within six months of our leaving.
Utah Valley (where I grew up) used to be largely farmland. Now it is an endless sea of housing developments, from Lehi to Santiquin and from the mountain benches to the shores of Utah Lake (including areas that were underwater in the flood of 1983). There are half a dozen new incorporated cities that did not even exist 30 years ago.
If you want to drive on I-15, you better drive like a maniac. Despite posted speed limits, the typical speed is 80.
I think the over-speeding is a vestige of the lockdowns. Once, while driving on I-40, I was passed by several cars that seemed to be racing, going at least 90 mph, apparently elicited by the absence of cars. It happened several times, actually. … I can’t tell if you like it there in Utah, but I hope so.
No, the over-speeding has been going on since 2002 at least, when I last spent any length of time there, after my mother passed away. I was there again in 2012 to sell the house, and against in 2013 to help my best friend move. Only got worse.
I grew up in Utah, but my husband and I moved to Oregon at the end of '88, to Kansas in '95, and to Iowa in '03.
We did live in Oregon for 7 years after we left Utah. So I saw the destruction that had been wreaked there as well. Fortunately, we lived in a little mountain town. It had its problems, and a few of them originated in California, but it was still a nice place to live in the early 90s.
It was my husband's homesickness for the Midwest that took us away from there. We've thought about going back, but at this point that would be like moving to Pompeii.
Don't forget Washington.
They shouldn’t be allowed in they have ruined their environments and then proceed to transport the same crap with them they won’t succeed we know who they are The Clintons Prince and Megan the Gores and of course our favorites the Obamas etc there are plenty others to join that heap!
I hear a parrot!