RobBob

I've been off the board since yesterday due to work, but I also have enjoyed the mtngoat/j_b debate. I have only been able to do a scan of it, but I would say that they got logjammed over j_b's insistence over peer-reviewed documents...and mtngoat has pointed out something noteworthy on that issue. Unfortunately, peer-reviewed means too often "like minded people"-reviewed. Go ahead, scientists, spray away in response. But in my experience, when you draw together paper-writers in various disciplines, you find that their politics, motivations, and biases are the same. Look to the funders of studies for clues to what the results are likely to say on this issue. Where is Copernicus when we need him?

freeclimb, was it 80,000 or 800,000? And remember, you called me too lazy to research...but you're the one who shot from the hip and was only halfway correct on contrails last week. gotta go!

Yep, mtngoat. But nobody here has the fortitude or interest to address my original thesis: That by using the 'not in my backyard' philosphy and forcing our animal food supply outside our borders, we'll actually be worse off for several reasons. Jim instead has decided that he knows best what's right for American water policy: Note the cynical attitude about "big money." Now there's an open-minded government employee who business can trust to see all sides of the picture! I don't think so. He just wants to control something in his working world. And he's being a tweaker. Read his post above with the word-games about 'historical' aquifer depletion being predominantly. The point I wade was that residential/commercial use is on a rapid rise, while agriculture has peaked due to BMPs. Can anyone comment on the original issue---the effect of moving our food upply abroad?

Hey trask leave the goat alone. I discovered that he's honored me in his bio.

Mr. Natural's got it right. "You should see what's happening in the elevator!"

freeclimb, you're a trip, too. Where did I say that animal farms didn't pollute? But it's a matter of scale of the pollution, if your true primary concern is spending your energy and $ efficiently in combatting pollution. 80,000 gallons of sludge at Circle Four sounds like a big mess and is. But as you probably are aware, a good raw sewage discharge from a municipal waste treatment plant during a flood, or a primary waste discharge necessitated by excessive stormsewer water in the system, dwarfs the Circle Four discharge and happens with a lot more regularity. We weren't talking about air quality issues, but you're right, there are health problems for workers associated with animals, particularly in buildings. Chicken farming is especially bad. But there are similar issues in the fiberglass industry, etc., etc. You sound like you just want to tar & feather animal agriculture. Jim, while you're trying to accuse me of half-truths about aquifer water use, tell me what the main Central Valley ag water source is? Is it aquifer or surface water? Does that change your equation and make yours an ecologist's half-truth? As far as parsing words, and dealing in half-truths, I don't believe that I have. My point has been simple and straightforward. We humans are point-sources of pollution and are more responsible for (water) pollution than animal farmers are. Moreover, we seek to paint others as wearing black hats and we try to control others' actions, while putting ourselves on the good-guy pedestal. And we ain't there. And we aren't doing what we could to clean up our own act.

One last post... but trask, there's more of OUR shit in the rivers. That doesn't make the headlines. And WE should pay for that, and deal with it first.

rbw, I understand your point, but I'm responding to a personal attack, which is something entirely different. I know this sounds like an excuse, but I have GOT to get my work done, so I will be gone awhile. Screw all you guys. I am unfamiliar with Dru's citations, but I am going to read up on them a little later---with an open mind, too, because I know he has one as well.

Hey Jim, is this the statement that makes you decide that I'm an "armchair quarterback with no real-world experience in the issues?" Just where do you "see either uninformed opinions, or blatant lies put forth as first hand knowledge?" Did I describe hog lagoons incorrectly? It looks to me like I have stated the facts pretty fucking clearly. Maybe the volume or NPK measures of human sewage discharge are closer to 1000:1 over animal discharge. Otherwise I fail to see your problem. I think that you have showed your ass this morning, my friend. And I'm glad to know that you are a superior climber.

I see that you replied before I did, and are trying to 'cheers' your way out of having popped off. Next you'll be going back and editing your personally offensive original post. Fuck you, kid. You're way off base. Your tirade reaction only proves my point, that so many people emotionally launch themselves at stopping other people from doing things, yet fail to walk the talk themselves. You neatly put yourself in that category by failing to fact-find before you popped off.

I guess once again we see the ire stirred deep within the enviro-scientist. My credentials are that I operate a business in with I deal with the rules and regulations of several states' divisions of environmental management, both on the air and water quality side. I am a civil engineer by training. I aim to be a prudent user of resources, as well as a fairly-well-informed person, and I am involved in the stakeholder process of DEM issues in those states. Those are my credentials. What are yours, pussnuts?

Jim, What the fuck are you talking about, and from what pulpit are you preaching?

Bullshitrunoff would make a good alternative name for Spray

good one, trask. I honestly hadn't thought about that for this particular ache.

Cheers, offwidth. I'm not a lobbyist for agriculture, mind you, I'm just for honesty in the debate. And one hard spin that I believe has been put over on the American public is this spectre, as Iain puts it, of 'hog shit runoff.' Currently, the standard waste mgt practice for large hog operations is anaerobic, lined lagoons. Unless there is a failure of the lagoon (i.e., a levee breeches), there is no 'hog shit runoff.' But I understand how the average citizen would believe that there is, based on our news media's reporting of environmentalists' assertions. Iain, I agree that row-crop agriculture has traditionally been a big water user, but I believe that overall you would find that ag water use is actually declining due to BMPs, rather than advancing. However, residential/commercial water use is rising fast. Hell, Boone Pickens wants to build a pipeline from his ranch in west Texas in order to sell water to the Dallas-Fort Worth area!

But hey offwidth, I really believe you are absorbing what the environmentalists build media headlines about. Human waste goes into treatment centers, where it goes through primary and secondary treatment. Weather events, overloads, and plain management screw-ups cause discharge of primary-treated and even raw human sewage into the watershed across the US---often. It is definitely happening, particularly during rainy periods! But it is not a headline grabber, because the scapegoat of the story would be...us. I challenge anyone to point to real evidence of significant acquifer contamination from livestock operations. This is a 'scary spectre' story that forces the target of the story to defend itself. You know how that works---by the time the defendent proves himself innocent, the damage to his reputation is done. And don't let people tell you that agriculture and industry are the bad guys in aquifer depletion, either. The fastest-growing user of aquifer water is---we residential/commercial users. You can look at depletion-zone cones on maps, and the majority of them are centered on municipal areas due to their water supply. But who is cutting back on water use in their home? People are building bigger houses, with multiple shower-heads in their showers. (I wonder how many shower heads are in Bill Gates' home?) I am not in the livestock business, but I do have a pretty good working knowledge about watersheds and about aquifers across the US.

I worked pretty hard this year in the gym to build strength, and am pretty satisfied with the results. With Twight's book as inspiration, I have built a lot of upper body strength, and can lift the equivalent weight of me and my pack easily on lat pulls, etc. But about 3 weeks ago, I screwed up. I added a pectoral 'fly' machine to my routine, I guess with too much weight, and since then, I can put my finger right on a sore point on top of my shoulder. My question is, what can I do to heal this without stopping the weight training entirely? I like what I'm doing, and don't want to lose the edge. But that soreness is not going away. (I did of course stop doing the pec fly.) Any ideas?

This is what I mean. The real issue IS odor and image. Water table contamination and disease control are "what if" arguments put forth to combat the hog industry. If you want to stymie an industry, force it to constantly prove what it is NOT doing. This is the way environmentalists are attacking the hog producers. There is nothing wrong with the 'not in my backyard' argument. It's an honest, defensible one. Hog farms stink; I once lived relatively close to one, and from that experience I wouldn't want one in my backyard. So fight the hog industry on the basis of your concerns, just don't believe everything you read or hear from the environmentalists who are using other (disingenuous) tools to do so. If groundwater and watershed contamination are our biggest concerns, then lets focus on what is discharged most often: human excrement. But that's a much more personally expensive subject for the armchair environmentalist, because it eventually affects our own pocketbook in the form of taxes. If disease control is a major issue, let's deal with sexually-transmitted diseases in a much more scientific and assertive manner and forego the politics of STDs.

Well, they did it again. Early this morning on NPR, I hear a story about the current administration's move to simplify the waste management requirements for livestock farming. Of course, the cynical reactions by environmentalists were included, and the reporter's voice was raised in emphasis as he listed the millions of pounds of manure that is generated by livestock each year in the US. Well no shit! (heheh.) We have 280 million people in the US, and most of them want to eat meat. And those 280 million people also do their own share of excretion. What I don't like about the enviro battles over livestock is the disingenuous way that they are waged. The real issue with hog farming, for instance, is ODOR. Yet the game is played over potential water pollution that has not happened. (The 'emergency' discharge of un- or under-treated human waste from municipalities into the nation's waters is like 1 million to 1 over animal waste discharges.) Environmentalists do not want simple, effective rules for US livestock production. They just want to hamstring producers to the point that they shut down. All the talk about wanting to preserve the "family farm" is bullshit, because family farmers are the first to be unable to cope with the growing morass of paperwork. Eventually the "corporate" farms will move their production more and more to Asia and Latin America, removing a large part of the nation's food supply from its borders. This is a bad trend for several reasons. We do a much more thorough job of inspecting food produced within the US than we do with imported food. The USDA, NMFS, and FDA are in every animal and seafood processing facility within the US, but only visually inspect a small fraction of incoming meat and seafood. Secondly, it is a security risk to move a 280 million-person nation's food supply outside its borders. Thirdly, we are only exporting the "pollution problems" we supposedly seek to control, moving them to third world nations. These are the same nations who want us to spend our $80% to remediate pollution the final 20%, while they fail to spend the first $20% to remediate their first 80% of pollution. The fair and effective way to deal with this is to really get all nations to buy into the same environmental economics. As long as we have "equal opportunity" environmental politics for the third world, then we will continue to see unregulated pollution and its attendant problems in the third world. I submit to you that pushing our animal agriculture overseas is ineffective in the context of global environmental management. In a way, it is arrogant on our part. It also poses potential health risks due to a much lower level of inspection. It is also a security blunder. Like a number of other environmental cost-benefit issues, we need to look at our food supply strategically and unemotionally before we bang the enviro drum.

My point, j_b, is that it appears that perhaps there a number of scientists who are seeking to prove their preconceived theory rather than seeking the truth with an open mind.

klenke, isn't it true that the earliest sunset/latest sunrise do not coincide with the solstice? I think I lost a bet once on that.

What is amazing to me is how worked up people get when someone suggests that they are wrong about global warming and man's rather meager contribution to it. Mark Twain, if he were alive today, would get a real kick out of it. No one has suggested that we humans should not reduce our noxious emmissions into the atmosphere. ( I am seriously in favor of cleaning up the worlds's air...even if it means that we must get India and other burgeoning nations to limit their reproduction. ) Let's just honestly and consistently and correctly analyse the facts about long term climate.

Sure, freeclimb, it's warmer now, but the point is that climate has often made rather extreme changes over decades. Causes range from asteroid strikes to rotational axis change to tidal force change to volcanism (which is in some cases triggered by tidal forces), etc. And that simple tool the thermometer can and is placed in widely-varied places.

damn, mtngoat and I agree on something. There is more CO2 emitted from termite and sheep flatus than from emmissions from the industrialized west.

freeclimb, I'm with ya on the atmospheric gases. However I have a hard time believing that Mexico City has an enforced policy on autos. Maybe I'm remembering something from 20 years ago when I lived in Texas and traveled some in Mexico, but there were an incredible number of old vehicles there then.