"Halfordian Golfer" wrote in message
...
On Dec 22, 9:28 am, wrote:
On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 07:44:19 -0800 (PST), Halfordian Golfer

Washington state was under water the other day. Should they all move?
snip

Your pal,

TBone

No, Washington state wasn't underwater, a small portion of the western one
third of the state was underwater. Meanwhile, most of the other two thirds
of the state was as arid as Colorado. Why? Because a little thing like the
Cascade Range, which creates a rain shadow, means the dollar cost (let
alone the environmental costs) of man moving the "excess" water across the
mountains outweighs the benefits.

The majority of the residents on both sides of the mountains, though they
don't like the consequences of floods or drought, are not willing to
bankrupt themselves or totally disrupt their environment to change the
situation - unlike some idiots who are so arrogant that they propose fully
controlling a system, about which they have amply demonstrated cluelessness
and are incapable of even understanding how complex the system is.

Timmy,
Heres a hint to get you started on the road to enlightenment: You cannot
change JUST one thing in nature. The natural world is an interconnected web
of relationships, and we are only just beginning to understand how the parts
interact with each other and are affected by changes in other, even
seemingly unrelated, parts of the web.

Major changes (e.g. a national water grid) create major changes throughout
the entire system, most of which we can't even begin to anticipate. As you
stated earlier, man is a part of nature, but he is far less in control of it
or able to control it than most (especially people with your mindset) seem
to think. And no, that doesn't mean we should retreat to caves and be
afraid to change anything. It just means that before we undertake massive
changes ( e.g. national water grids, atomic bombs, etc.) with potentially
even more massive consequences than intended, we should think long & hard
about the risks versus the rewards, and discard those ideas that, even with
our limited knowledge of the situation, don't pencil out.

Bob Weinberger La Grande, OR