"told that we must give them up"? By who? (not serious question) I don't know why anyone would need a Hummer that goes from 0 to 60 in 3s. Cap it if you must. Child labor laws, which btw have been recently relaxed by the GOP in multiple states, should continue to be pushed international. The auto industry is going all EV. Innovation, capitalism, and government investments are pushing it there. Citizens of smart government playing the game right will benefit with economic boom from not just the EV transition but the inevitable transition to all-clean energy. A Kodak moment. As for evil - gov can regulate us out of there. And we really should move away from Oil wars and funding regimes with poor human right records.
This is one area where Biden deserves full credit. He has done surprisingly well with pushing through infrastructure investments for a better, more secure future, even with the challenges posed by a super slim majority in the Senate. The GOP has offered nothing but culture war and imaginary carnage.
You seemed to be criticizing me for making an argument I wasn't making. Again, that zebra mussels have improved water clarity and changed formerly eutrophic waters to mesotrophic or even oligotrophic status seems uncontroversial. This is not to say that the zebra mussels' impact on Lake Erie (or any other body of water) has been "100% an unadulterated and unalloyed GOOD THING"--which is what it sounds like you are accusing me of saying. If I have misinterpreted your point, then I apologize. But when it comes to "pollution," in Lake Erie the zebra mussels clearly have had an impact on waters that were polluted--an impact that some find to be a positive thing: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/tec...ls-impact-anything-but-clear/article20399424/ Whether that positive impact is limited in a short-term sense or ultimately will prove to be negative in a long-term sense is a completely separate issue. So for example, if you would like to talk about zebra mussels' impact on the zoobenthos of Lake Erie as a negative in comparison to the water clarity issue, that's fine. But that's a completely separate issue: https://www.newswise.com/articles/zebra-quagga-mussels-trump-pollution-as-change-agents-in-lake-erie
First of all, this is all debate - we're here to debate, so nothing is ever about personally accusing anyone here. We're attacking ideas, not people. I figure we know one another well enough to be at that point, right? I don't presume to know your motives, you don't always reveal them. But if you post something, it's fair game to be critiqued. When it comes to ecosystems, there are no separate issues. That's kind of the point. You can't say let's look at this in isolation. Sure, if someone takes a dump in your living room, and a guy comes along and cleans it up but leave the mess in your kitchen, you can argue well, the guy did a good thing, he cleaned up my living room! But objectively, he made it worse actually by leaving a bunch of **** where you eat. Removing pollution would be nice, but these things aren't doing that, they are simply moving it somewhere else to be released later. And they are creating a host of other problems. So it's not only that it's not 100% a good thing, it's hard to find a substantial silver lining here.
You’re focussing on one aspect, water clarity while the links you post also say that invasive species are a problem. Note water clarity is the most visible factor of pollution but it isn’t the only. Anyway the last few posts were bough show you have no interests in having a serious debate on the subject.
I was trying to be polite to Lou by not pointing out specifically he was engaging in a straw man. You . . . it's your normal m.o. as far as I can tell. Sengun is a great passer!! Yes but he's terrible at defense. I guess you're right, he's a horrible human being.
and lest you persist in accusing me of having "no interests in having a serious debate on the subject" . . . recall your original assertion: your premise was that "it was a combination of private innovation and government action that largely solved . . . (the same with things such as) . . . the pollution of the Great Lakes." I pointed out (rather indirectly but it was a comment made more in a spirit of humor than that all-important D&D value of debate!! ) that zebra mussels had actually accomplished as much if not more cleanup of pollution in the Great Lakes as your asserted "combination of innovation and government action that largely solved it." To your credit you had originally said that innovation and government action "largely" solved it . . . you did not say "exclusively" solved it. You left room open for other factors, including zebra mussels, as having a hand in the "solving" of the problem of Great Lakes pollution. AS AN ASIDE . . . There's that philosophical question again: can mollusks have a "hand" in solving anything when they don't have hands? discuss. I never said that zebra mussels were a "100% good thing" or an unadulterated and unalloyed positive beneficial phenomenon in the Great Lakes. That would be stupid. I thought it unnecessary to point out the negative effects of zebra mussels--especially when I was only trying to point out their impact on a SINGLE VARIABLE. "Pollution." Sweet Lou's jumping on the zebra mussel's well-known NEGATIVE impacts is like me jumping on Sengun's defense when someone else is trying to emphasize Sengun's offensive positives, for example passing, court vision, and scoring. Misdirecting the conversation to argue Sengun is a bad defender, and then using that misdirection to assert that "therefore Sengun is bad at basketball" would be a straw man. If the context is Sengun's defense, then limit the conversation to Sengun's defense. If the context is Sengun's overall rating as a complete basketball player, then make it clear that that's the conversation's true topic and go ahead and have that conversation. Zebra mussels have in a very real sense helped clean up water quality from a POLLUTION aspect and improved water clarity from other, non-trivial aspects (such as recreational value for swimming). We see the same impact of zebra mussels on the Hudson River. The impact of the zebra mussel on the Hudson River has not been ALL negative. In a lot of ways the history of zebra mussels' total impact on both the Great Lakes and the Hudson River have not yet been written. There's a lot of evidence, for example, that as the Hudson River is cleaned up, there is less and less nutrient load for the zebra mussels and they do not live as long (look at the evidence of their declining size, for instance). Moreover, as water quality improves, things that EAT zebra mussels have moved into the Hudson River and those predators now appear to be another force knocking down the population of zebra mussels in the Hudson. Nobody knows what will ultimately happen: it could be that thirty years from now the zebra mussel issue will have sorted itself out, ecologically speaking, and the Hudson River will be fine. I imagine the same might be true of the Great Lakes as well. I dislike having "serious debates" on subjects here in the D&D mostly because people here are so unpleasant and almost wholly inclined to jump on ad hominem attacks rather than hear people (with whom they disagree) out. That's the essence of my "it's always about me" response to such attacks.
