Posted on 04/10/2002 4:59:39 PM PDT by WhiteyAppleseed
Full Title:Scientist’s Computer Projections Fail to Reveal Tree Threatened by Fatal Disease, Extinction Likely (Opinion is Divided, though a Review is Unlikely)
Subtitled: Computer Model Revealing lack of alligators at North Pole is cause for Concern (Environmentalists Shout Save Allie!)
There are two bills in Congress,H.R. 2829 and H.R. 3705, to amend the Endangered Species Act of 1973. If approved, the law would require empirical, field-tested data and peer-reviewed data for ESA action. Too much analytical modeling-theory is the trend, a method that has been shown to fail expensively with attempts to manufacture habitat for the Piping Plover in Nebraska.
On February 16, 2002, in Grand Island Nebraska, a farmer named Tom Schwarz testified during a House Resources Committee Field Hearing. Mr. Schwarz, representing the Nebraska Water Users, also known as NWU, told the committee, ”Our organization traces its roots to a federal court order issued 12 years ago this week. Early in the relicensing process for FERC Projects 1417 and 1835—the hydroelectric projects of Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District and Nebraska Public Power District--environmental organizations, with the backing of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, attempted to require the districts to release water stored for irrigation, supposedly to benefit endangered species. Before the order was stayed 80,000 acre feet of water was dumped and to this day no benefits to the species were ever shown.”
It is this kind of “precautionary principle” decisions, called for by the little barking environmental dogs and all, based on modeling theory, that the two bills before Congress are trying to address. This was the same kind of “precautionary principle” choices that left the Klamath Basin farmers high and dry, their grievances ignored.
The Nebraska farmer wasn’t done there, however. While relating another story of “mitigation” that calls foradding sediment to the riverNot only was Nebraska being asked to provide 130,000 acre feet of water and 10,000 acres of habitat, now the ridiculous idea of adding thousands and thousands of tons of sand to the river each year had been introduced.”
This hair-brained idea came about from the good scientists using modeling theory, bad science pushed to the forefront because the ESA as written and enforced permits it. Mr. Schwarz is one out of many Americans who see the ESA as a tool of control ”to gain power through control of water and land. The evidence is everywhere. Every spring 500,000 Sandhill cranes use the river and their numbers have increased since the 1960s. Yet of the 150 whooping cranes that migrate a few weeks later, and never more than a handful of them land on the Platte, we don’t seem to have enough habitat. How can that be when the Service uses Sandhill habitat as a surrogate for the whoopers?
As Mr. Shwarz said and I think we all agree: “The system we have now related to administering the ESA is broken.”
I urge everyone to contact your representative in Congress. Ask him or her to support HR 2829 and HR 3705. Ask them to sign on as a co-sponsor of these bills.
The ESA is a reckless buzzsaw used to destroy the Tree of Liberty’s protective shade. The Act has hurt citizens. In 2001, the Act killed four fire fighters. Farmers in Oregon lost their livelihoods because of bad science and the ESA.
The Northern Spotted Owl snatched the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness from thousands of hard-working countrymen. Recently, it was discovered that the Northern Spotted Owl breeds with the California Spotted Owl. Will that science be used to delist the bird and return Americans to work?
Federal and state scientists committed fraud in a lynx survey; they claimed they were testing the system. Mr. Hansen, of Utah, said: “If this is true, it shows a fundamental mistrust that these scientists have for the very science they are using.” Former Rep. Kelly used the same lame excuse when he was caught in Abscam. Their actions could have affected management decisions in fifteen states and fifty-seven national forests, my home state of Michigan among them.
The Endangered Species Act will be thirty next year. Enacted in 1973, the House passed the bill 390 to 12 and the Senate passed a similar measure on a 92 to 0 vote. President Nixon signed the new bill into public law. Congress has wrestled over reauthorizing the ESA for years. You have to wonder if it would ever see the light of day, if we knew then, 30 years ago, what we know today. The Act is holy writ to the environmental evangelists who never seem to unable to find a Chicken Little scientific model that is used to harm our countrymen.
On March 20, 2002, the House Committee on Resources heard testimony from a variety of people. Interestingly, among them was Peter Illyn, Executive Director for a ministry called Restoring Eden. His testimony speaks volumes about the future of the enforcement of the ESA. His testimony discussed the biblical and moral argument for good stewardship as it relates to the ESA. His testimony is evidence of what many have been saying for years, that environmentalists have made their case a religious cause, and the many examples where irresponsible science was used to forfeit private property shows an alarming trend that we can ill afford to ignore.
I believe it was Hayek who wrote: ” It is possible that a fanatical religious group will impose upon the rest restrictions which its members will be pleased to observe but which will be obstacles for others in the pursuit of important aims.” In the case of the Endangered Species Act, Americans face an Inquisition the likes of which has never been seen.
One of the original patriots, Sam Adams, said: "If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." American lives have been harmed by this destructive Act and too often (as with the Klamath farmers) it has been a case of too little, too late, and their voice, raised in collective protest and redoubled by other concerned citizens, was ignored. I could easily pose a canny analogy to our nation’s early days, in which legitimate grievances were ignored and a crisis followed. Now is the time for us to stand among our fellow countrymen whose lives have been harmed by the ESA, a threat to the beauty of the Tree of Liberty, an endangered species.
Where did you get that idea? It isn't what I propose to deal with it in the book.
More than you know. It's one heck of a lot of information in 400 pages.
But, how much airtime has been devoted to questioning the contract that placed the farmers and ranchers at risk?
The national government has made a mess of selling off its lands ever since it ignored the Equal Footing Doctrine subsequent to the adoption of the Constitution. That's how far back this goes. It continued with the use of eminent domain on behalf of the railroads (Abe Lincoln was a prominent lawyer in that regard). It got FAR worse with the Civil War and the 14th Amendment protection of corporations as citizens. So, it's a long story.
We have reached a state of affairs in agriculture where almost everywhere the more thoughtful specialists no longer ask what would be a rational policy to pursue but only which of the courses that seem politically feasible would do the least harm…We must confine ourselves to showing that agricultural policy has been dominated in most Western countries by conceptions which not only are self-defeating but, if generally applied, would lead to a totalitarian control of all economic activity.( Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 1960 p362)
And he was right.
By attempting to assure agricultural producers a reward for their work, by delaying that growth of civilization, Hayek argued that all was done was to postpone adaptations that agriculture could have made on its own. Elsewhere in that chapter, there were these words: Few arguments have been used so widely and effectively to persuade the public of the “wastefulness of competition” and the desirability of a central direction of important economic activities as the alleged squandering of natural resources by private enterprise…It is undeniable that where for such technological reasons we cannot have exclusive control of particular resources by individual owners, we must resort to alternative forms of regulation.” (Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p368)
That was 1960. Six years later, in 1966 we had an Act to protect the eagle and a few other animals, and another seven years later in 1973 we had the ESA. You’re apparently not in favor of HR2829/HR3705.
The concern I have is political. They'll SAY that we have fixed it and should give it another 20 years to work before we try again. So if it works out as I suggest... Hadn't thought of that one, had you?
How long have we been subsidizing agriculture?
Since Roosevelt, at least.
Has it been ruled unconstitutional?
Who sued?
You believe this new philosophy capable of the energy to grab a holt of us all?
The philosophy is true to Natural Law. I'm doing everything I can. The rest of it is up to people like you. That IS what self-government is about, isn't it?
I count at least a 40-year mindset enabling coercive action through the ESA. Hayek’s work indicates the time-frame is easily longer. You believe we have time?
Maybe, maybe not. Didn't you read the preface?
You don’t wake up in the morning wanting to write something like this. It isn’t that it is a lot of work, or two years (now three) of your life without pay. It is the concern that you may not have the time and money to get it done, or that it might be too late. There is no pleasure to be found articulating the appalling consequences of pervasive injustice, corruption, and ignorance. There is legitimate personal concern for capricious distortion or reprisal against my family. There certainly isn’t the expectation of making a lot of money. There is simply a lot at stake here.And consider any other petition of government, that by anyone’s standard is legitimate, to change the dynamics of the ESA, to be unfounded, a “tyranny of the urgent”? Aren’t you basing your argument against doing anything to change the ESA on the idea that the Act is unconstitutional regulation?That any government cannot directly manage an economy is obvious. Yet this nation has fallen to the notion that government should have a monopoly to manage something as complex as an ecosystem, with policies subordinated to political prejudice instead of technical judgement.
In a way, I don't give a damn what anybody does to the ESA as I intend to use it against the government. It's the definition of what constitutes an "expert in the field" and the monopoly control of credentials in the univerisities that concern me. This makes what I intend more expensive and gives too much power to a dependent professorate. In those respects I am against the bill.
My questions aren’t a critique of your work, as I’ve only read a small portion of it on-line—I’m assuming the website contains some of the philosophy of the book.
Philosophy, no data. There IS hard data BTW.
Rather, my questions are asked based somewhat on what you’re doing on your 14-acre latifundia (Latin: for a lot of fun to do a________) and on the analogy of the ranch in chapter one—local zoning and the other rules/regulations/Acts could as easily be responsible for the demise of the ranch. I’d remind you that zoning is as least as old as W, D.C.
Although zoning has been upheld by the SCOTUS, they were wrong. They lacked a good definition on how to deal with externailities and intangibles associated with the use of property and I have discovered the necessary principles. I am working on Tom Campbell now at Stanford, as he was a student of Scalia's. This philosophy has the power to provide the SCOTUS what it needs to restore private property rights as unalienable. (You clearly read right past the central principle in Chapter 1 (as intended; if I just told you, you wouldn't get it anyway). Whether a lot of people get it or not I have no clue. Unless readers grab it and help, it won't go anywhere. I don't have any money left for promotion. The books are finding VERY good homes and readers, so that jury is still out. It's scary though.
As for my land, it is a responsibility. I care for it as I would for any of God's creation. If I care for it well, it will provide for me. As it is, I am using it as a laboratory, to develop restoration processes that are affordable and efficient. We simply don't have the labor in this country to undo the damage done the with our current methods. It's just too big.
Now that you have read the ranch story, you may want to go back and read the first seven pages or so again. Think carefully about what it says about the nature of property as a dynamic and interactive process. You either own your body, or you don't own anything.
A casual observance: while reading through (I think the thesis and/or chap 1) I sensed a brewing animosity toward the academic world. Why do say the universities have monopoly on credentials? But this more than anything helps me to understand more so why you are opposed to what the legislation proposes. I'm not convinced that the universities could be said to be dependent. The statement is so broad and sweeping. Nothing wrong with a healthy amount of skepticism, but all< universities?
What control does the university have over the student after graduation? I've witnessed a case like the ranch situation of chapter one where the different parties all brought their scientists to the table, each one offering a differing view as to what harm may be done. I'll take another look at chapter one.
Because that is how the lawyers play it in the courtroom and in legislative hearings. That is how insurance companies require state licenses for coverage and government permits demand those credentials as well. It has incredibly pervasive and insidious effects. Consider child development. A Ph.D. in child rearing derives his or her credential by creating "new knowledge" of child development. Note that it must have two qualities to be new: it must be untested, and it must be different than what has worked in the past. That doesn't give us much of a chance of success, does it? These are the people who define how our schools are to teach children. The same is true for environmental mangement theories.
Note the insidious role state licensing plays in this loop and the educational requirements for such licenses. For example: Could a self-educated person get a law license by merely passing the state BAR (British Accreditation Registry) exam? Not any more. Who said that the State should define what constitutes a qualified professional? Who said that the universities were to have that monopoly? Private societies used to compete with each other to do that job until the lawyers scared them out of it. Consequently, the entire system is rotten out of fear of attorneys. As a result, we are now so far from a free market we no longer know how one would work.
Besides the source of their funding, if you were to ask me what is wrong with the university system as such, I would offer that it is almost entirely analytic, driving people into ever narrower fields of expertise. Given the multidisciplinary nature of nature, it is the wrong kind of expertise. There is no faculty credential for a multidisciplinary and synthetic thinker. In fact, the only such credential we have in our society is the patent. That is where my system derives much of its leverage.
Note how increasingly feudal is the nature of our society as is controlled by the professorate as agents for the few that regulate who gets those credentials with grant funding. It's amazingly effective. Try to get a peer review without being a "peer." I did. Couldn't get one. I would have had to pay them and that creates a conflict of interest. I got comments, but not real reviews. Faculty peerage is precisely that. There are a couple of editors of academic publications who have standing offers to publish reviews of my book and still there is no response and no money. IMO it is part elitism, part fear, part financial, and part comfortable ideology. What I am doing is slowly working at that through the more prestigious professors emeriti as they are more independent than many of their colleagues. So far, so good, but it is a slow and careful process.
The roots of the system lie in our adoption of English law and the rather aggressive interpretation of the Constitution by Mssrs. Jay and Marshall at the very founding of the Republic. I have more to say on that, but much of it is speculative and would require more research.
And as to these agreements between land owners and various entities...conservation easements.....when we had a ranch in Montana, they tried pushing these conservations easments onto us, too.....and when you got down into the neat little details, you found out if your barn burned down, you could replace--so it looked and was exactly as it was when you signed the easement....ditto fences, yada yada yada.
I do not trust fedgov employees to do the right thing.....talking about computer models--computers are only as good as the garbage that is put in them.
It isn't just the lynx story that makes one leery of fedgov employees....what about the IRS giving slavery credits?
And as to Congress writing good bills....yeah, right....NOT.....they can put all they want in them, after the hearings--things which would thrill you to death--and then when they get to the floor, the heart is ripped out....or when it goes to the other side, it is ripped out....and then the bastards get together for one of their special committees and they can re-write the whole thing--I know, I know....they're not supposed to--but hell, they aren't suppposed to rip the Constitution apart, either....but they do....anyhow.....once they have their rewritten bill each chamber votes it up or down.
As stoopid as most legislators are, they don't bother to read the bill....they just think "environment"--good and vote for it.
When you have representatives/senators willing to vote that the fedgov can take a third of your land before it qualifies as affecting your value and therefore entitling you to some sort of payment....and all in the name of the environment, mind you.......worry bout the LIBERTY TREE!
WA: “Who determines whether or not a species is “endangered”? History has shown that of the species listed, many should never have been listed. Once listed, the task of removing is remotely successful.”
Ya know, without having read any of the bills you're promoting--but rather going on your attitude--are you friggin suggesting that fedfov have any part of a say in what is 'endangered', 'threatened', or 'over-filled'? After they have shown their propensity for featheringfurring their own nest?
Or that an NGO should have any say--they live off fedgov and UNgov!!
You really remind me of some county commissioners I dealth with in Montana, and their Planning Board--they act like land owners/producers just run around looking for ways to s**t in their own nest! Or that sunshine has to be piped in to them!
The proposed civil verification system provides privately certified environmental management with an insured guarantee. Certification companies audit practitioners to validated process specifications. Competitors in the verification business have reason to assure that their customers operate at both minimal risk and cost because they reinsure the practitioners. The program requires continuing research and education toward extending the state-of-the-art of resource management practice. Insured certification, as proposed, must supercede civic permit authority for those under coverage.Can you anticipate where I may be going with this? Some worries here, based on your analysis of academia. The potential for good is here, but for the opposite as well. Rather than go into detail, as my brain is tired enough that it may not be coherent, there are answers in the pages?
The March 20th, COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES meeting heard from a variety of concerns. James J. Anderson Research Associate Professor School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences University of Washington made referrence to an alternative review process, the Science Court. (His testitmony included a list of referrences at the end.) His description:
An alternative peer review process, the Science Court, mimics a legal procedure, with advocates, critics, and a jury. It is a unique and potentially powerful technique, but like any tool, can be misused if not understood and applied properly (Kostoff 1997). Kostoff noted that the Science Court probably had more debate and surfacing of crucial issues than any other concept he evaluated; however, it was time-consuming compared to a standard panel assessment.I am in favor of HR2829/HR3705 because they are an attempt to place a check on a system that needs a big check. I haven't had time to look at his Kostoff's lengthy diagnosis of peer review. Perhaps you'd be interested.
Said I, " I'd just as soon see the ESA be ignored like so much of the much more important documents that are ignored with its enforcement. But the ESA is not being ignored. That Act, and its off-spring, are the tools used to de-limb the Tree of Liberty. In it place, a Conglomerate Branch of Government has been grafted on. HR2829/HR3705 seem to be steps in the right direction. "
Rowdee said, " Or that an NGO should have any say--they live off fedgov and UNgov!!"
WA said," NGO have a lot of say: They are part of the Conglomerate Branch of Government insidiously instituted while everyone watched and at times cheered for it. No one wants the neighbor to burn trash in his barrel, right?"
"You really remind me of some county commissioners I dealth with in Montana, and their Planning Board--they act like land owners/producers just run around looking for ways to s**t in their own nest! Or that sunshine has to be piped in to them!" thus spoke Rowdee
WA said, " Here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, there has been a recent case of NIMBY activity critical of Planning Boards, County Commissioners--the NIMBYs wanted to say what went on on property they didn't own. Recently, large amounts of money have been spent to set aside land "for the public". But, yeah, you may be right--everyone says we all look alike around here, even County Commissioners who wear flannel shirts and muddy Danner hiking boots."
How do we do that, Rowdee? Business is good for them and I don't see them declaring bankruptcy anytime soon. How do we stop them?
New York TimesApril 16, 2002
Scientists Seek Logging Ban on U.S.-Owned Land
By JIM ROBBINS HELENA, Mont., April 15 — A letter signed by 221 scientists and sent to President Bush today calls for ending all logging on federally owned forests, arguing that the value of the timber produced was minuscule compared with the environmental damage caused by the harvests.
The letter, a project of the Sierra Club and signed by Dr. Edward O. Wilson, Dr. Anne Ehrlich and other prominent scientists, primarily biologists, asserted that the American taxpayer not only subsidizes logging directly, but also indirectly, because logging reduces the economic value of the forest for other uses.
"It is now widely recognized that commercial logging has damaged ecosystem health, clean water, and recreational opportunities," the letter reads. "Annually, timber produces roughly $4 billion per year (from national forests), while recreation, fish and wildlife, clean water and unroaded areas provide a combined total of $224 billion to the American economy each year."
Timber industry officials, however, said that the scientists' argument was wrongheaded. Not only does cutting timber on national forests provide wood products, they said, it also keeps forests healthy.
"All this national forest land the environmentalists want to sit there and burn, which is what it is doing now," said John Mechem, a spokesman for the American Forest and Paper Association. "We've seen fire after fire because environmentalists want to wall off the national forests. There is a scientific argument for active forest management, which includes tree removal."
I believe this argument has an enormous amount of validity, as this relatively new book I purchased has pointed out. In the book, Natural Process by Mark Edward Vande Pol, the environmentalist argument about doing nothing is questioned. While it is easy to convince urban activists (a technical term I picked up in the book) that logging is wrong--show them torn up ground, broken branches--there could be greater danger in doing nothing. Errors of inaction Mr. Vande Pol calls them.
The philosophy of preservation preserves ignorance of ecological systems by destroying the resources and tools to fund, measure, mitigate, or reverse historic damage. It could make the situation impossible to fix.(Natural Process p 30)
There was one other sobbering idea in the book, though presently I can't find it. Paraphrased: The environmental movement is composed of foundations, environmental groups that are corporations, and business is good for them because they have a supply of resources (other people's property, gov't-owned land) to finance they operations. What happens when they run out of resources?
But if we take this notion of the environmentalist's: That by doing nothing we're protecting something and tag it with the question raised in the book: However, if we adhere to this perspective of doing nothing, what good is preventive intervention? and apply it to the legislation in Congress to take some of the sting out of the ESA--how do the two compare?
On one side we have the argument that to support HR2829/HR3705 is to lend legitimacy to regulatory problems that tryannical, an obstruction to the growth of the Tree of Liberty. Would that be the same as "doing nothing"?
I'd like to continue, but I have to go look at a house.
I've got nothing against Hayek or Rand, I just don't think they finished the job with their ideas. I differ somewhat with Hayek over monopoly as I don't think that he properly understood irreversability or the proper role sovereignty. Rand had no clue at all about what to do about economic externalities. There was plenty of room to play with ideas and I think I have hit on a few, though they need more development. I do hope you find the book illuminating and that its principles may have some historic and practical significance.
Since you have the book, you can find reference to that 1940 treaty that set up ESA and sold out the rights of property owning, taxpaying and voting Citizens.
What possible use is "owning" anything if that doesn't include "controlling" it? That doesn't mean one's use includes the right to threaten the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of one's neighbor. All rights are reciprocol among PEOPLE, NOT flora and fauna. Boundaries and borders of properties and jurisdictions must continue to be legitimate.
What has been missing is a system of quantifying transcient elements, i.e., flora & fauna, that cannot recognize said boundaries and borders. The same arguments apply to illegal immigration, etc.
Accountability and control mechanisms are now feasible and can add values to our economic system to incentivise true protections for habitats on a fair and equitable basis without forced and phony mitigation schemes that rarely work.
I'm coming back in a few minutes to post a LibertyMatters.com article about our 32nd "Earth Day." The wasted effort and squandered costs are one of the biggest "Black Holes" in our economic system of pseudo capitalism.
Earth Day, 32 Years of It
April 22, 2002 marks the 32nd anniversary of Earth Day. Its founders patterned it after anti-Vietnam War protests, but this event was organized as a national grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment. The observation has evolved into one dominated by professional environmental organizations that employ armies of lawyers, lobbyists and public affairs specialists and whose top managers pull down six-figure salaries.
Information provided by the National Center for Public Policy Research Earth Day 2002 Fact Sheet; shows that federal environmental regulations have caused the costs of building single family homes in three American cities, Cincinnati, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Santa Fe, New Mexico, to triple between 1974 and 1994.
Administrative costs to write and enforce federal regulations for fiscal year 2001 is estimated at $19.8 billion and staff numbers for the 54 federal regulatory agencies have ballooned to 131,983.
Americans had to spend $843 billion to comply with the rules in 2000, or $8,164 per household.
Ninety per cent of all businesses in the United States employ fewer than 20 people, which translates to a cost of $7,000 per employee for the firms to comply with federal rules.
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