WHAT'S WITH THIS POLLUTION CRAP?

I spent several months at the Nha Be marine police facility down river from Saigon. That was a severely polluted river. Everything was dumped into it. To make it worse, it's a tidal river in that location so a lot of that crap passed us a few times, going back and forth.

The river teemed with life though. I saw men poke a hole in the bottom of a can, drag it thru the water, and come up with a catch.

I was reminded of that yesterday when the Jungle Princess and I joyrode on a water taxi up and down the river that goes thru Bangkok (Chao Phraya River).

That river is just as polluted as the Saigon River and just as teeming with life. Some people were tossing bread chunks off a dock. There were hundreds upon hundreds of fat fish scrambling and thrashing for the food. My wife reached in and pulled out a two pounder with her hand. (She threw it back.) That was a smaller one.

I got it all on my video camera. We had to watch it as soon as we got home to make sure we weren't dreaming.

Many years ago I was in Teheran. I was told that Teheran was the largest city in the world without a sewage system. The sewage ran down open ditches at the sides of streets. These were called jubes, if memory serves.

My questions are these:

Why aren't all the people in Teheran dead?

Why isn't all the water life in those two rivers dead?

Would those be the predictions of environmentalists if they were given the situations as hypotheticals?

The sad truth is that environmentalism has become one of our many religions, and like all religions, logic is rejected and dogma prevails.

I say sad because I'm interested to know why cholera isn't (wasn't) epidemic in Teheran and why fish thrive on crap, chemicals and whatever (plus still make a great food source for humans). But enviros have become so anti-logic that, in the end, they do the envirement more harm than good. In these cases they would probably just shake their heads and say, "No. That's not happening."

Here's a few examples of their logic:

When the San Onofre nuclear plant opened the enviros learned that sea water would be pumped in to cool it. The water would then be discharged out in the ocean. The enviros immediately coined the term "thermal pollution." They protested and predicted dire consequenses to sea life. Short term and long term studies revealed that sea life flourished at the end of the pipe.

An enviro spokesman became hysterical on a radio talk show and shouted, "These creatures are being killed!" (He was talking about trees.)

(My favorite.) The enviros said research had shown that that people exposed to secondary cigarette smoke were in more danger than the smoker! Wait a second! Back up! Think about this one. Where is the smoker when these people are breathing in his secondary smoke? Is he sneaking in, blowing smoke on these innocents, and then running outside giggling? I think not. If he stays in the same room, isn't he also exposed to secondary smoke? Doesn't he get both primary and secondary? So how could it be more danger to the innocents?

As in all religions, dogma and group-think replaces reason. When you lose logic, you lose your cause.

I realize these are anecdotel accounts. But I am much too lazy to do scientific research. I'm sure we can all add many, if not hundreds of examples.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could put the common good ahead of our petty causes. The enviros are so out of touch with logic and so unwilling to do honest research that they have lost all credibility.

UPDATE:
Another favorite of mine is the commode with the smaller resevoir to save water. Someone should have tested them first. It turns out that to get the commode to do its' job properly, you must flush it twice. The result is a largs loss of water.

UPDATE:
During WWII I lived next to a beach on San Francisco Bay which was near a large shipyard/drydock (Hunter's Point). Now and then damaged ships would come in spewing oil. Our beach would turn black. No human ever tried to clean it up. In a while the action of the tides would clean it. I can't say how long that would take. I would guess three weeks. Maybe it was more. Maybe it was less, but it got done. It would be valuable to do an experiment the next time there is a "catastrophic" oil spill. Rope off a portion of the beach and forbid entry to enviros. Let there be a race to see which part of the beach get cleaned first, where the enviros work or where only the tide works. I would bet a tie.