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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (58061)	11/21/2002 7:15:48 AM
From: frankw1900	Respond to of 281500

OT: An Apocryphal story. In the late 1940's early 50's there was a great flood of the Fraser River. If you look at a map of British Columbia you can see this is indeed a great river. Much effort was made to dyke the bottom part of the stream and these dykes extend easily 30 -40 miles upstream from the river mouths. That part is not apocryphal. There is a story I've never confirmed, that a man was convinced the reason the river flooded was that beaver had nearly been extirpated from the almost all the river range and its tributaries by the fur trade and later by ranchers, farmers and municipalities. So this man spent the next twenty thirty years reintroducing beavers throughout the whole river range. The Fraser River has not ever reached since the levels of the great flood. Some claim its because of the beavers. I don't know that for certain, but I've seen the beavers at work. They're a marvel to be hold. They'll dam your sewer, your ditch, the stream at the back forty, the culverts for the highway and railway, not to mention the one behind the strip mall. The suckers hate the sound of running water! Some references: webspinners.com Literature on this topic is growing rapidly. Most notable are reports since the mid-1980s from the University of Wyoming's Water Resource Research Center. These offer a particularly rich source of ideas and very practical advice. However, in the 1930's the US Department of Agriculture advocated methods to recharge aquifers artificially for underground storage. Water can infiltrate streambanks or percolate downward through the soil to the aquifer faster than it travels horizontally through the aquifer and returns to the stream. Small structures -- those made by beavers, humans, or both in partnership -- reduce flow velocity, trap and stabilize sediment, and cause water to infiltrate streambanks for storage. The dams built by humans are about a foot and a half high. Required materials are old tires, woven wire, erosion mat, and steel posts. Success has been about 95% for many hundreds of small dams. Reports from the University of Wyoming give detailed instructions and advice. These and other reports also provide needed information about how to measure and monitor the changes in ground water storage levels, usually with numerous small diameter plastic-pipe wells. Efforts by beavers are a little more sophisticated and their list of materials is different. Also, their instructions are harder to translate. However, both groups of builders find that structures work best when plant roots are encouraged to bind together the construction materials. Beavers generally are willing partners on projects undertaken by humans, given the opportunity. hcn.org uswaternews.com (ROTFLMAO) ag.arizona.edu agric.gov.ab.ca These were just off the first page of the Google search: Beavers "water storage" For whatever reason, our part of the world seems to be getting warmer. It was once warmer before and there were giant beavers. Anyway, my point is this: if doesn't snow it rains, and you catch it, and stop it from running into the salty stuff too fast.

To: LindyBill who wrote (58061)	11/21/2002 6:13:23 PM
From: Doc Bones	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

A "Computer generated" Global Warming scenario Bill, A scientist concluded that industrialization would cause global warming around 1880; he didn't even have an Apple II. It's not that difficult, more CO2 means it gets warmer. Obviously weather is a complex system, and it's difficult to say with certainty what will happen. The computer models have been uncannily accurate in predicting the warming that we're now experiencing. You don't need a supercomputer to detect this: just stick your head out the window. The lobbyists who are assuring us that global warming is not scientifically proven, are the same people who assured us for decades that there is no scientific proof that smoking is harmful to your health, or addicting. I personally think that scientists are a little more devoted to "reason" than these lobbyists, and I think it's kind of a shame to trash a 4 billion year old living planet in order to set the world record for most people breathing at once, but that's just my opinion. Doc p.s. cool pictures of you dancing. Zarathustra is a dancing god.