Sunday, June 01, 2008

Environmentalists, Ammonia, & Water Supply

The point Charles Krauthammer makes in this superb column is accurate on many levels, including how he describes the position of many Americans on global warming—including mine—in the opening paragraph of his new column where he states:

I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.”

He also goes on to make the case that some environmentalists are attempting to take control of much more of the economic and social sectors—though some current controls are very appropriate—through more government action.

It appears that the sewage treatment system for Sacramento has become inadequate and not up to the standards metropolitan areas of this size and growth should have and that has led to an over-abundance of ammonia in the Sacramento River, thus in the Delta, which might—though scientists are still not sure—be causing problems with certain species of fish.

Here is another opinion piece trying to continue the narrative of some environmentalists that dams are obsolete solutions to water supply, a contention that flies in the face of a common sense strategy that capturing and storing water from large seasonal storms for use when times go dry should never become obsolete, unless prudent thinking itself becomes so.