Naturalists up in arms over downed trees along Chester Creek
July 16, 2012 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
Gary Meier, with the Lake Superior Coldwater Coalition, and others are worried about the future of the trout stream that passes through Chester Park.
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and a treeless, overheated trout streem slots nicely into your utopian world? Where are all those ideals you espoused in previous posts – in which we milked our own cows, darned our stockings, etc?
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Blind ignorance, Dan H.
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Wasn’t there but appears like heavy-handed amateurs that went Lumberjack with a turbo chainsaw. Where were the city foresters? Who supervised this? It clearly looks like an abomination and there will be grave consequences to the ecology and aesthetics of the park. What a great shame!
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Oh my …the enviro wackos are alive and well. They make it sound like the area was clear cut for gosh sakes. Yes, they took out some of the larger damaged trees. If you walk the area you will see many trees in the 3-5 inch diameter range that now have a chance to grow. They have also planted many new trees next to the creek. This is a city park……you have huge numbers of visitors to the park including unsupervised children. My wife and I were in Chester for both cleanup events. The creek was full of mangled trees and brush. In no way a safe situation to have in a park. The trees that are left will thrive now that they have room to grow.
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I don’t know much about warm trout streams or anything like that but it does seem that an awful lot of trees were cleared. I quietly questioned the need (to clear so many) when I walked through the park recently, but I don’t have all the facts. It is, however, evident that Chester Park has taken on a completley new look.
Whether or not is was necessary, this flood was and continues to be a sad situation for many.
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since the tree removal was contracted out to private businesses one should assume more trees were cut down then was needed because A.) the business gets paid per tree removed hence the incentive to say some trees need to go when they didnt really need to and B) because the government was footing the bill (hence no real limits to what they will pay to get the job done) which allows the business to claim costs are higher than they really are.
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As someone who is aware of environmental stewardship and usually is on the left side of most arguments…lefties please! We are in a federal disaster zone, protecting the interests of human safety and expensive infrastructure has to be the first concern. OK, since the DNR is stocking the stream, the trout are not normally there? Then the simple answer is we stop stocking the stream for a few years until the trees can come back and provide the requisite shade. If is unfortunate that some kids will have to fish elsewhere, but again, it was a natural disaster. You should consider yourself lucky if all you need to do as a result of this natural disaster is find a new fishing hole for a few years.
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This is what happens when cities hire people who think they have all the answers on their own and do as they please. The clean up would have been a much better out come for park users and habitat if it had been many minds working together instead of one.
As usual from most of the comments here this is an indication as to why Minnesota waters and lands continue to see damage and pollution at an alarming rate, the majority don’t care. Yup people who care about our environment are called wackos. Well if it wasn’t for us wackos standing up since the late 1800′s to protect our natural habitat there would be nothing to protect today because we would not have safe water for human use nor would we have trees or even breathable air. I’m happy being a wacko because I have a much better understanding about life than those that call me a wacko and it makes me smile.
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I’m all in favor of protecting the enviroment. Its the ” Oh my gosh.. the sky is falling!…the sky is falling!” mentality over the removal of these trees. You would think an oil tanker washed up below the ski jumps and emptied its cargo into the creek. We had a 500 year flood that washed over the area. Yes, it will take a few years for the smaller trees to mature. It wont take 20-30 years like the article states. The smaller trees will mature faster now that they have room to spread out. The park actually looks better now than it ever has. This is not the BWCA…..if you have to remove damaged trees then do it. Now it looks like they are going to set up a committee of 14 government agencys to decide on what can be cut and what can’t. Can you imagine the the paperwork and wasted time in getting the rest of Duluth cleaned up? Government at its best! Shouldn’t the DNR try to find out how they lost Thompsons flood insurance paperwork before it trys to micromanage everyone else?
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No, Chester is not the BWCA. But damaged, diseased, fallen, dangerous trees in the BWCA ought to be removed to improve the health of that forest.
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let’s look at this scenario. Say none of these trees were cut down. kids go fishing and a damaged tree gives way and falls on someone. What would people be saying then?
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I don’t know….seems to me they care more about the fish than public safety. You know that kids are going to climb all over this area. The city did what it needed to do.
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Did the so called “naturalists” participate in the clean up of those trees? Maybe to say “we shouldn’t cut all of these trees. I doubt it very much. These kind of people just ride in on their high horse after the fact and complain. Just like PETA when the zoo animals perished. That was a shame but PETA did nothing to help at the time.
Those same trees that were never allowed to be cleaned up before the storm were the ones that washed down and stopped up all the culverts and thus flooding out the rest of the town. I doubt if they cut healthy trees down, only the compromised ones that will stop up culverts in the future. There is so much debris in the rivers and streams from this flood, it needs to be cleaned up. Otherwise every time it rains we will have flooding because the water cannot run off down the streams.
So keep cleaning up the streams, save the good trees, and they will grow back much faster.
It is the same people who don’t want to see any logging especially after a blow down storm. Look what happens forest fires! Boundary Waters is a classic example of this. There is still lots of fuel on the ground after the ’99 blow down. Of course they will burn eventually.
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It is alarming to see so many people who just pass this off as a necessity. Small wonder why the planet continues to be stressed all over the world. Unilateral decision making on behalf of the city is foolish, arrogant, short-sighted and maybe self-serving to say the least. Twenty to thirty years is a modest estimate for recovery of significant tree growth. Ask anyone who has planted trees in their yard how painfully slow they develop before they provide any real benefit. Notwithstanding the fish, thousands of birds and small creatures with be deeply impacted as well. I’m sorry, but Kasper continues to disappoint in his decision making both in this case and the school board decisions.
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Strongly agree with your statement Mr. Kalligher.
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——=. Unilateral decision making on behalf of the city is foolish,—–
What are you suggesting? A big new bureaucratic “process” that has to be followed whenever the city needs to cut down a tree? No wonder this country is grinding to a halt.
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Why do you make what happened sound ridiculous? No body said anything about approval over cutting A tree. Nor was there any mention of a bureaucratic process. Maybe you need to read the article again. There were over 100 trees and uncounted brush along a designated trout stream under the control of the DNR. Since the DNR is the regulating authority, then, at the very least they should well have been notified. Your attitude is to minimize what occurred and attempt to make stewardship a negative this is precisely the attitude necessary to stomp all over the planet ruining the delicate balance and proclaiming, “Everything is fine.”
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I was responding to your post in which you criticized the “Unilateral decision making on behalf of the city”
You think there should be some multilateral process to decide to cut down a tree?
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Dave you are still stuck on the one tree issue. You are not getting the point. I guess you plan to stay there.
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I feel this needs to be posted for everyone who doesn’t know about it yet. It’s some observations about environmentalism from the most intelligent human being that has ever lived, bar none.
“We’re so self-important. So self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these stuffing people kidding me? Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven’t learned how to care for one another, we’re gonna save the stuffing planet?
I’m getting tired of that stuff. Tired of that stuff. I’m tired of Earth Day, I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world save for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a stuff about the planet. They don’t care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.
Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are stuffed. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we’re a threat? That somehow we’re gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun?
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles…hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages…And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet…the planet…the planet isn’t going anywhere. WE ARE!
We’re going away. Pack your stuff, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.
You wanna know how the planet’s doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet’s doing. You wanna know if the planet’s all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kilowaia, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” Plastic…stuff.
So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now. And I think that’s begun. Don’t you think that’s already started? I think, to be fair, the planet sees us as a mild threat. Something to be dealt with. And the planet can defend itself in an organized, collective way, the way a beehive or an ant colony can. A collective defense mechanism. The planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet? How would you defend yourself against this troublesome, pesky species? Let’s see… Viruses. Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And, uh…viruses are tricky, always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps, this first virus could be one that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus, making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along. And maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction.
Well, that’s a poetic note. And it’s a start. And I can dream, can’t I? See I don’t worry about the little things: bees, trees, whales, snails. I think we’re part of a greater wisdom than we will ever understand. A higher order. Call it what you want. Know what I call it? The Big Electron. The Big Electron…whoooa. Whoooa. Whoooa. It doesn’t punish, it doesn’t reward, it doesn’t judge at all. It just is. And so are we. For a little while.”
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You can dream. I will give you that. Why didn’t you credit Mr. Carlin for his work?
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I did, in the second sentence of the post.
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You are a clever one. Good day to you sir.
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There is only one Dead Inside…imitations pale.
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This piece by George Carlin makes for great comedy, just as it did when it was obviously originally written, probably over 20 years ago. But I don’t know if you’re using it as some blueprint for the way things are, you know, in the real world, or what, but it really doesn’t have much relevance today.
Seven billion self-serving, selfish people who think the world is solely for their enjoyment, livelihood, to exercise dominion over, etc., without regard to what they will leave behind for future generations DO have an effect on the environment and ARE effecting change, and not for the good.
I don’t know how George would have incorporated global warming into this comedic skit, but, unless you are one of those who choose to stick your head in the sand (along with the Republicans, big business, etc), and choose to do so because George said there’s nothing we can do, or whatever, and ignore what’s going on all around us and around the world, nothing will change and it will be too late.
Maybe you don’t have kids or grandkids, but those of us who do, want to leave the world knowing we haven’t doomed them to a steady stream of cataclysmic events that are solely manmade.
Just so this is related to the article about Chester Creek, in a world where water is going to become an increasingly precious commodity (as we’re seeing), every body of water should be protected to our utmost.
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Did you read it at all?
Things are changing and have been changing for humankind for quite some time. We are circling the drain until we finally fall down the hole and the earth will heal itself. Human life will not have a lasting effect on the earth. It’s been through quite a lot more that is a significant threat compared to humans.
I have a child just as you have children and grandchildren, and you know what? They’re going to have it harder and die in worse conditions than us and there is absolutely zero you or anyone else can do about it. Humanity does not care about the environment and it has been proven everyday since man became preeminent. We humans are the next wave of dinosaurs to be extinct and we roll closer to it everyday.
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Greater minds than yours agree that global warming is manmade. I know George-y’s skit has you believing otherwise (though studies on global climate change have occurred after this piece you mention), and that climate change is manmade and can be reversed and is and will continue to be the cause of the weather anomalies the world is experiencing. I think I mentioned that in my previous post. Did you read that, or do you just like to read what YOU write and listen to whatever thoughts rattle around in your head.
I suggest quit reading over and over again what George Carlin had to say 20-some years ago originally on the environment and quit watching the skit on YouTube, or that you take it for what it is, you know, entertainment; and read CURRENT scientific writings by the scientific community to re-educate yourself and maybe you’ll see (though probably doubtful) that climate change can be reversed if we act soon.
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You have just perfectly illustrated everything that Mr. Carlin said.
Firstly, he wasn’t an entertainer. He watched the world and spoke about it on stage to try to raise the bar for people’s awareness. People take it as entertainment because the greater majority do not have the basic human function to think about these deep, heavy issues abstractly and because they don’t really want to be bothered with the reality of things, choosing instead to worry about things that are really important, like getting their car fixed or Justin Bieber’s new album.
So, what you are saying is that everything the earth has encountered over the last FOUR AND A HALF BILLION YEARS on a cosmic scale was not a danger but us humans are the ones that are going to destroy the earth. Really? Your scientists have the conceit to think they know what’s up in the cosmos because they have been studying it for, let’s be generous and say, a mere 2000 years? Globull warming is not manmade. We may slightly contribute to it in a negligible degree but the earth’s climate has been changing drastically for four and a half billion years, sometimes hotter, sometimes colder. You know what? It has always corrected itself. We can tell this because the worldwide fires didn’t last forever. The ice ages didn’t last forever.
Do you remember that commercial long ago in the 70s and probably before where there a native american indian crying on the screen because of the pollution to the land? That was 30+ years ago, at least. So, what have we changed for the better regarding pollution to the environment in these last 30+ years? Obviously, if people were so very concerned about it back then, something would have been done by now I would think. People do not care about environment. They care about Pepsi, monday night football, E-Bay and being a slave to their instincts so they don’t have to take responsibility for themselves. Circling the drain, baby.
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Bravo Olivia, but most of the people commenting here really don’t care or are doomsday influenced. Your comments will probably suffer the fate of mine, “Hidden due to low comment rating.” Nonetheless Bravo!
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Kenneth….I feel it is wrong to hide comments after someone took the trouble to write one. IMO it is rude.
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Can you imagine that? George Carlin was not an entertainer! Man have I been wrong for all these years, I can remember when he was on the Ed Sullivan Show; he did great comedy routines. He only became a political comedian many years later. George Carlin always entertained whether or not you agreed with his political view; but, to say he was not an entertainer, well, Donald Duck is not a cartoon character and Walt Disney was only interested in butts.
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Nothing can hurt you when you are a dreamer.
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Well if that is the case….bring on the dreams.
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So blame whoever authorized the cleanup, and fine whoever cut the wrong trees. No doubt some of it needed to be taken care of… On a side note, I wonder if the same Naturalists wouldnt mind covering the cost of the Miller Hill area flooding due to their protesting over water drainage in that area years ago. And perhaps they would like to kick in some more cash to make sure this type of flooding is avoided in the future!
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No matter how the job was done someone would have complained. The aftermath of flooding brings out alot of emotions.
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Let’s move on people….my God! Trout over the safety of humans?
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How very high-minded of you, Jojo.
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Does anyone else see the irony in “Naturalists” being up-in-arms over the disruption of a creek that is only a trout stream because the DNR very un-naturally stocks the creek with 300 trout every spring? If we truly let the stream go “natural” (stop stocking it with fish), will there be any trout in it in 5-10 years?
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One would have hoped an intrepid reporter with some critical thinking skills could have brought up that little twist of irony, but then again a BA Comm is the easiest degree on Earth to achieve.
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The entire article is misleading. The older gentleman posing next to the tree stump…look at the stump real close. Can you make out in the photo that the middle of that tree was hollow and rotten? You can stick your hand down inside of what’s left. Also the angle that the photo was taken from…..if you could pan to the right you would see that the creek washed out a huge area beyond what was the creek bank. An area that has to be 50 or 100 feet long and 5 to 8 feet deep. If that fellow in the photo steps the the right a couple of steps he would fall over the edge of this washout. Talk about inventing the news. In some areas they will meet to plant more trees. Only because the trees were torn from the banks or the bank itself is gone. This due to the high volume of water. I guess it was a slow news day. Shame on the DNT for printing fiction.
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One correction…If the person taking the photo of the stump takes a couple of steps to the right he or she would go over the edge. Also……I saw many stumps that look like they have lost some or all of the soil that had surrounded them. Some stumps with entire root balls are still in the creek bed. Was the city supposed to just leave these trees? Many of the larger stumps that I saw along the creek are full of decay in the center. People need to know the entire story and not just the half one the DNT wrote.
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Also there’s the old perspective trick of placing the tree stump closer to the camera than the man. Like the old joke of making a 1 lb walleye look 10 lbs by putting it much closer to the lens.
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Exactly…One other thing that they didn’t show in the picture… Growing out of the same root system is a clump of saplings that are from 1-3 inches in diameter. You can just see a tiny bit of that just left of the tree stump in the photo. They should really take off now that they have room to grow. But the newspaper would rather create news instead of reporting. Get people all worked up like the city clear cut the entire park.
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What a shallow view. Could you possibly see why it is no longer a natural trout steam?
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Agreed, seems like a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking, much like the zoo disaster. At least they got off their posterior and did something. Perfect, no…but better than nothing.
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Another none news story to give people something to talk about…
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Adding -ists to the end of any word degrades the conversation. It dehumanizes and creates a “them, not us” attitude. We’re all just people here, and we all pretty much want the same things. The only problem is that while some people continue to fight to protect things like the natural environment, others fight against it, taking for granted all the energy that was put into protecting it in the first place. The same attitude prevails anytime there’s an article about the BWCA. It makes me wonder what people would discredit and ridicule if there was nothing left to discredit and ridicule.
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See my post above. The environment isn’t going anywhere. We are. The biggest thing in the world to discredit and ridicule is humanity because we open ourselves to it with perfection. To believe that humans can have a lasting effect on the environment is laughable at best. The environment has been around for four and half billion years. It doesn’t need us for anything, except to make plastic.
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Our use of petroleum is definitely one of the causes of the Earth deciding after 780,000 years to regenerate itself by shifting the magnetic poles and turning on it’s axis 1/4 turn (changing the position of the equator). We’ve ‘deplenished’ (my word) it’s resources and ability to regenerate because of our rate of polluting it. The poles normally shift every 230,000 to 250,000 years. Scientists can’t explain it, but it appears that the ‘pause button’ was hit to allow humans to live here. There’s no other answer for the earth to wait nearly 4x as long as usual to cycle again. When tons of gallons of the Earth’s oil is drained at such an accelerating rate, the reaction is the crashing of plates on top of each other. Earthquakes, tsunami’s and weather patterns are a direct cause of us using up it’s internal cushion.
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Wow we have a scientist. I wonder why “Mother” made all them there minerals, maybe just to stop earthquakes is not my scientific guess.. One thing about science, never proven till after it happens. Mayan scientist claim we will all be gone in 2012, so what’s the problem?
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The problem is you are complacent. You won’t be convinced until it is too late. You see Bob….Earth is a planet like no other because of it’s protective magnetic field that is now weakened because of pollution caused by use of petroleum products.
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“Protective magnetic field that is now weakened”, another scientific marvel. Does Batman know this?
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I’m not amused by you Bob. Laugh while you are able to. Time is running out.
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devilschild you surely amuse me with your doomsday scientific information. Please share more…!!
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Oil is the blood of the earth. It’s no analogy. When the oil in the earth is depleted the planet will die and so shall we.
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Dead Inside, your interpretation of Carlin is cute. However, I’m not worried about the environment a thousand years from now like you suggest. I’m worried about it right now in the present, and over the next few decades when my grandchildren’s generation will inherit this land. Take a drive down Central Entrance or any metro suburb and see that people have trashed the environment. “Environment” doesn’t mean trees, birds, and unicorns… it is merely a synonym of the word “place”. And I’m tired of people who are so jaded about the crappy environments they create for themselves, and then go on to say that they want to spread their crap even further at the expense of places that are actually worth caring about.
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The best thing that can happen for the environment is if people get a move on and self destruct so not one person is left on the planet. I’m all for that. I’m sure the earth was much more clean and beautiful before humans came along and ruined everything. We have proven time and again that we are not deserving of a planet like earth. If I could live to see the end of mankind and all of it’s hubris, I could die a happy man. The environment is not going to get any better as long as there is at least one person left alive.
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We don’t have a choice. Human beings will cease to exist as a species, either by our own hand or the fickle hand of Mother Nature, sooner rather than later. It’s inevitable. We can all go back to living like cavemen and it’s still going to happen. It’s human nature, arrogant as ever, that says hugging a tree or wearing hemp clothing or dumping fish into a stream is somehow going to “save” the earth. It’s laughably naive, but entertaining nonetheless.
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you just contradicted yourself in consecutive messages. In the first you write “To believe that humans can have a lasting effect on the environment is laughable at best.” Yet in the message above you write the best thing for the environment is for us to self destruct and that the planet isnt going to get any better as long as were on it. So i posit this question to you…which is it? lol and to DanH oo dan…the only arrogance and human nature at play here is humans putting themselves above and separate of the environment so they can abuse it all the while arrogantly thinking they DONT have any effect on the environment. BTW we can still have an effect on the environment yet the environment can still self correct.
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To Levi – Humans are a very mild case of eczema or psoriasis to the earth. A surface nuisance. Not bad enough to be considered a threat but annoying, like an itch. Do you like bugs crawling on you or do you flick them off?
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To suggest that every person and every civilization that has ever existed was destructive to the planet is downright ignorant. One need look no further than the American Indians to find a society that existed in complete harmony with the environment. The fact that you think that it is inherently human to destroy the planet shows just how trapped you are by the modern Western view of the world…. and how easy it is to become insular and cut-off from history and the rest of the world with this viewpoint.
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Ok, Dances With Forums (AKA Merv), you got me. The indians didn’t destroy the planet. They lived a different way, a much better way than we live today. No technology, no electricity, no gas, no tweets, no refrigeration, no pollution, etc. BUT, there isn’t any place on earth where people live like that anymore and haven’t for quite a long time and most wouldn’t want to because they’ve become too soft. If you can make it so that we could all go back to that time, I’ll be right there with you because I’ve been advocating that very same ideal for years now. Make it happen.
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i would flick them off but that doesnt mean they didnt bite me and give me malaria or lymes disease before that…..yeah the earth will probably kill us first but that doesnt mean we will not also kill earth in the process. You would be surprised im actually more of a Promethian where i believe human ingenuity will overcome most environmental and resource issues we face…up to a point. Hubris comes into play when you dont even believe in limits… it amounts to ignoring problems until its to late to use human ingenuity for solving them.
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I sort of agree with you. Humans are working to solve the issue but in such a way that proves we are in denial. Like that billionaire guy recently in the news that is wanting to build a space shuttle to give rides for those that can pay. I believe that we will be looking at developing space travel so we can spread out and find another planet to live on and let this starter planet go down the tubes. Little energy is expended in the restoring of what we’ve already got. We would rather find a new house than to spend time and money fixing up the old one.
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Interplanetary travel will never happen. Ever. We’re stuck with Mother Earth for as long as we can hold out. Once we’re gone, some other species will evolve to take our place at the top of the food chain, just like it’s always been.
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Never say never. Just because you cannot fathom the possibilities does not mean that they are unattainable.
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I don’t think anyone here is fighting against the environment. If any of these trees had been along our streets or in our yards they would and should be removed. Leaning,dead, not long for this world,uprooted or damaged. This is a public park in the middle of the city. We are not talking about a nature preserve. Chester park is full of kids running in and around the creek. The creek also goes down towards the lake and through culverts once it hits 4th street. Not a system that you want full of trees and branches. The DNR is on a power trip about all this. And you have the extreme-ists all worked up. They are trying to turn Chester into something it is not. I suspect they won’t be happy till they chain the gate to the park for good. Remove all traces that mankind was here and ban all humans from setting foot on this ground till the end of time.
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I wish I had an ounce of your imagination, John. Who are “they” who want to ringfence Chester from all humanity because we must be reading from different community boards?
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I never said “they” were going to fence Chester in…….but given the chance some people would. I did exaggerate a bit when I said they probably wanted to lock the gate to the park for good. But if the newspaper can write a story and exaggerate about what happened then why can’t I take a few liberties? And who are the “they”? The DNR and all those nature groups that tend not to think about reality. Right after the flood we heard that those dams in Chester would simply have to go. Forget the fact that those ponds have been there since the 30’s. I guess they pose some great danger to the fish in the creek. Next we hear that the mangled jumble of twisted trees should have been left exactly as the flood left them. I’m expecting any time now that the music in the park will be banned permanently. The decibel level is much too high for those “planted” trout to tolerate. And those ski jumps? They must go because the birds might bump into them. Where does it stop? I’m not saying that it was great those trees were compromised by the flooding. If you walk the creek you will see hundreds of other trees that will take the place of those that were lost. The city will need to plant a few trees in the open space where the creek washed out the shoreline. The park will rebound quite well on its own. The trees that are left will grow much faster now that they have some room to spread out.
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