Let's talk about the environment

[Roguish Lawyer]

Seems to me this is a good topic for this group. Here we have a bunch of guys who generally are conservative or libertarian in nature, who spend considerable time in the woods, who like to blow things up, who believe in hard work, and who hate liberals.

Are you "pro-environment"? How?

Some sub-issues:

Jobs v. The Environment
Environmentalists vs. The Military (e.g. underwater comms)
Logging: Good or Bad for the Environment (Blademaster?)
Pollution as a Properly Regulated Externality
Tradeable Effluent Permits and Other Market Solutions
The Rainbow Warrior: A Reason to Like the Phrench?

[The Reaper]

Originally posted by Roguish Lawyer


Are you "pro-environment"? How?

Some sub-issues:

Jobs v. The Environment - Maintain a healthy rate of employment, unless environmental damage extreme.

Environmentalists vs. The Military (e.g. underwater comms) - Guarantee whoever replaces us will care less about the economy than we do, whether it is the Russians, the Chinese, or the Mexicans. Red cockaded woodpeckers, or trained soldiers? Short decision making process.

Logging: Good or Bad for the Environment (Blademaster?) - Managed forestry. Protected old growth timber in some parks. Replant and reseed after cutting. Controlled burns.

Pollution as a Properly Regulated Externality - Unsure of your terminology.

Tradeable Effluent Permits and Other Market Solutions - I do not favor this program. Clean it up, or pay a fine.

The Rainbow Warrior: A Reason to Like the Phrench? - Environmental terrorism is still terrorism. You perch in my permitted tree, be prepared to execute a dynamic PLF, sounding off with a loud and thunderous "AIRBORNE!" Spike a tree and be turned over to the tender mercies of the loggers. Burn an SUV and get to sit strapped in one while it burns. OTOH, your property is yours. Want to save trees? Buy land and post it. Want a nature preserve for Bambi? Buy a forest and post it.

TR

[Roguish Lawyer]

Originally posted by The Reaper
Pollution as a Properly Regulated Externality - Unsure of your terminology.

Markets are incapable of regulating "externalities" like pollution, so there is an economic justification for environmental regulation by the government.

Or so the argument goes.

[Bill Harsey]

Hell yes I'm in favor of a great, clean, sustained environment. The big argument is who is going to be in charge of the resources. Here is my short version, the resource providing communities and traditions are under attack by people who want to see all this activity ended. These same people survive because someone else provides everything they need to live. Harsey statement: "Those for whom everything is provided have the luxury to condemn those who provide". Same can be said of the military. More to follow. (edited for spelling...as usual)

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Originally posted by The Reaper
Jobs v. The Environment - Red cockaded woodpeckers, or trained soldiers? Short decision making process.

Logging: Good or Bad for the Environment (Blademaster?) -
TR

TR, Hmmm-seems to me that a young CPT and his GS instructor addressed both these issues back around 89-90

Jack Moroney

[Bill Harsey]

About that Logging stuff, I find it incredible that our very liberal newspapers here in the Sate of Oregon always support the radical environmental point of view. Editorials come out against logging fairly frequently. This is pretty interesting, under the best of conditions (optimum) it takes a pound of wood to make 1/2 pound of paper. Recycle factors in somewhat but must be continually replenished because each time paper is recycled, the fibers break and get shorter. Paper is an entanglement fiber, like felt. When the fibers get short, they don't make paper. The second largest newspaper in the state of Oregon uses by it's own admission, 8,500 ton of newsprint (paper) in a year. This means it took at least 17,000 ton of wood to make that much paper. I sat down one afternoon a few years ago with the then President of the Associated Oregon Loggers (a life long logger and logging company owner himself) to figure out how to convert this to acres clear cut in medium sized western Oregon timber. He sorted thru his yield records of previous timber sales to figure tons per acre. (gross vehicle wieght per log truck, 82,000 lbs, actual wood weight, how many loads from a unit of a known acreage size, etc) Depending on the timber size, this meant it took somewhere between 400 to 700 acres clearcut of timber to keep this paper in business for one year. Yes I know most of the paper pulp comes from Canada now but clear cut is clear cut. It sure takes a lot of forest to print the message not to cut it.

[Bill Harsey]

Logging: Good or Bad for the Environment (Blademaster?)


Good question, First some interesting history, the people who study geology and plants back to the last ice ages have come to the conclusion that the forests in the Northwest have a long history of catastrophic stand replacing fires. In geological/biological studies it has been found that forests over 200 years old were very rare. Douglas Fir (Psuedotsuga Menziesii, for those of you who think I just drank my way thru college) grows best in full sunlight or has adapted to these conditions. This is the predominant tree in a climax forest in western Oregon. This is why the fastest reproduction of Douglas Fir is when the stand is clear cut. nature will clear cut it with fire if we don't. Don't take this as an arguement for over logging, it's not. I've always been in favor of smaller clear cut units in the woods. The interesting trick the environmental movement has pulled off is this: Environmentalists rail against the evils of corporate logging, then put many of the small private timber operators out of business thus turning control of the forest over to the biggest corporate multinational timber companies. Much of this was done under the watchful eye of Al Gore while he was VP, some heavy deals got cut under his watch.

[The Reaper]

Originally posted by Jack Moroney
TR, Hmmm-seems to me that a young CPT and his GS instructor addressed both these issues back around 89-90

Jack Moroney

Sir, I have an MFR from that time frame where a certain Training Group Commander told us that he had some sort of Biology degree and that most of the marked Red Cockaded Woodpecker trees were in fact, mislabeled by the Environmental Management geeks and were actually occupied by Red Headed Woodpeckers, which we all knew, were NOT endangered.

I believe I have witnesses to that as well.

TR

[Bill Harsey]

Hmmmm, I saw a lot of marked bird trees on my visit, are those the same ones you speak of?

[The Reaper]

Originally posted by Bill Harsey
Hmmmm, I saw a lot of marked bird trees on my visit, are those the same ones you speak of?

Not any more.

TR

[Solid]

IIRC, Greenhat had an excellent proof of how the market actually internalises externalities such as pollution.
IMO, however, the market-based solution is reliant on the perceptions of the people (ohmygod, acid rain/no air/no food etc) and will therefore begin to regulate itself only when very dramatic environmental problems start occuring. This will likely be too late for the companies to reverse the effects of their products and/or creation of output.

Solid

[Radar Rider]

The Earth itself, and it's environment are more powerful than anything mankind can impose upon them. Everything on planet Earth runs in cycles, to include weather, agriculture, regeneration of life, and those that depend on the planet to live. Earth'll be here long after humanity is gone from her soil.

The planet has either ridded itself of life or been subject to mass extinctions in the past. Obviously, the dinosaurs are first and foremost that come to mind.

The hippies that cry about trees or frogs dying off are simply ignorant of our planet's history. Face it; eventually, this rock in space will become uninhabitable. At some point, our Sun, and Earth will die. I'll not overly inconvenience myself in order to prolong the agony of a later generation that is already doomed.

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Originally posted by The Reaper
Sir, I have an MFR from that time frame where a certain Training Group Commander TR

Hmmm, who was that masked man

Jack Moroney

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Originally posted by Radar Rider
The
The hippies that cry about trees or frogs dying off are simply ignorant of our planet's history.

And that's not all that they are ignorant of. When I was but a wee lad and a graduate student at the University of Maine pursing a Wildlife Management Master's we had to run crap details for the faculty and the local extension service. One such task was running a waterfowl check station during hunting season to sex, age, and identify the various birds that were being taken. Now this is not a fun thing and requires, among other things, flipping a duck over on its back, facing its anus up, placing your thumbs along either side of it to open it so that you can determine the sex and age. Of course if you killed the critter outright and it was laying in the bottom of your boat for a couple of hours a lot of pressure builds up in the intestines so when you break the seal, so to speak, you want to make sure that you are tilting that orifice away from you. So here I am, knee deep in crap and feathers after checking thru a couple of hundred birds and some beaded, pony tailed, uncleansed, Steven Segal wannabe comes up to me claiming that the woodduck I was about to crank open was the last passenger pigeon (which had been extinct since 1900 BTW) and just how could I be any part of this senseless slaughter. I was in a fowl (no pun intended) mood anyway so I invited this clown to witness the fact this could not be a passenger pigeon because everyone knows the difference between a pigeon's butt and a duck's ass as I would show him-but he would have to get real close. He did and my marksmenship was superb. Dispite the fact that he obviously was allergic to soap and water he was even more allergic to duck crap. The rest of the day actually was rather pleasant.

Jack Moroney

[Bill Harsey]

Well Done Sir!