woof!
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- Dec 12, 2010
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Here's an idea. It isn't about defeating the Guvmint, since that probably won't happen, and what's worse it isn't what suction dredgers want. But it might represent a compromise that is politically doable and doesn't simply kill suction dredging.
I am not involved with suction dredging and so don't know how practical this might be. Obviously it won't replace 5 HP motors. But it might be a compromise that works as opposed to one where you want to win a fight that you ain't gonna win. So hear me out, this is (as far as I know) an out-of-the box idea in a place where the in-the-box ideas don't seem to be making much headway.
*********************
Does suction dredging harm fish habitat? Heck, I don't know, there arguments on both sides. But no politician (as far as I know) has the guts to argue that gold panning harms fish habitat. And, in the big picture of fish habitat, only a few areas are worthwhile for gold suction dredging so obviously suction dredging is not the new Monitor and booming environmental wasteland. I regard fish habitat as worth protecting, and simply on the basis of area affected by recreational gold suction dredging, the activity probably has little overall impact even if locally it's a mess (which I'm not arguing that it is because I don't know, I'm pointing out that the knee-jerk environmentalist argument that it does create a local disaster area can be accepted for the sake of argument and still not lead to a conclusion that the activity should be banned.)
Accepting the knee-jerk env-arg just to break the ice, can possibly lead to fruitful discussion about balance between hypothetical environmental destruction of a minimal nature balanced against another activity. The problem the knee-jerk environmentalists will have with this, is that they don't see a social value in the "other activity", and the objective of the knee-jerkers is to preserve and reclaim a past which realistically speaking has no identifiable "ideal state" which could be maintained as a status quo. Environments change even in the absence of human activity, and knee-jerk environmentalists themselves are human activity who for the most part (if I may be permitted some hyperbole) do not live like primitive aborigines in balance with environment. I doubt that one could find an honest one among them, it's all hypocrisy.
A person can be a devout environmentalist and still despise the knee-jerk fundamentalists of the movement. Unfortunately the knee-jerk club is obsessed with being in control of everyone else and that obsession drives them to positions of power. You may not like this but that's how it really is. You won't change what they are (since they're not really interested in science based reason, it's all about them being in control). But, they don't own the entire government, and getting something rather than nothing from the bureaucrats caught in the middle will probably require formulating a position that makes sense to almost anybody and disarms the knee-jerk club. Here goes. You won't like it, but consider the alternatives.
************
Begin with the argument that what is at stake is recreational mining. It's just another outdoor activity like many of the things that even the knee-jerk club like to do. Nobody enjoys the outdoors without leaving footprints.
I don't live in California any more, but so many people do recreational panning in California (and the activity has so much business support in the Mother Lode country) that I suppose recreational panning is pretty much untouched from an environmentalist perspective. The restrictions that exist are (I suppose) property issues which is legally a whole different animal.
When you put the activity in the framework of recreation, then a bit of gain is fine (in the case of recreational mining it's just as essential as it is with fishing, nobody regards fishing as recreation in a place where catching fish is either impossible or illegal!). But it's not an economic activity like commercial fishing which is almost entirely prohibited in inland waters.
From the perspective of a knee-jerk clubber, motorized suction dredging is not recreational mining because it is motorized (the gas engine is doing your recreation for you) and because the "bigger is better" nature of suction dredging makes it look like an economic activity where the whole purpose is to come out ahead on the deal, as opposed to pursuing the golden dream as a form of entertainment.
I gather that in the past, there have been attempts to place a technological lid on suction dredging by limiting the size of the nozzle. Actually, I think that was a pretty good way of approaching the problem-- easy to define, easy to enforce-- but as we all know that didn't make the controversy go away. There are still those gasoline engines that don't look like recreation, and worse yet look like polluters; and the suspicion that an honest citizen might actually find enough gold to pay for the supplies needed in the operation and have enough left over for a cup of coffee at the end of the season. .....Did I mention gasoline engines? They hate gasoline engines!
The nozzle size thing might have worked in a rational world, but y'all are not dealing with rational people, you're dealing with the knee-jerk club for whom reason is irrelevant, and politicians who may not be opposed to reason but they're ill-informed and have trouble grasping issues that are framed in the wrong sort of arguments for their ears. The Mother Lode business establishment is substantial, and can provide economic arguments in favor of recreational mining. Most politicians understand money, at least as political pressure if not as something to be spent wisely.
That brings us back to the science & technology stuff that the knee-jerk environmentalist club is so fond of beating their drums on. They hate gasoline engines. Never mind all the reasons why this is so and why they're so fixated on it, you won't change that. The problem is how to use their fixation to disarm them.
Drop the whole thing about suction nozzle size. Politically, it didn't work. It wasn't something you could hang any kind of science on, it was arbitrary. It was eminently practical, but it didn't address the underlying philosophical political conflicts. I'm sorry.
Instead ...... get a grip....... take gasoline engines off the table. If you don't, they will, in fact a case could be made that they already have. You can suction dredge with Chrysler Hemi if you can suction dredge at all, but the problem is that suction dredging is being banned!
Gasoline engines are problems anyhow, especially with carbon monoxide and fuel and oil contamination issues.
Embrace the "recreation" argument. And I don't mean insincerely, I mean if it's all about coming ahead at the end of the season you are going to screw it up for everyone including yourself. Once you grasp the fact that what stands a chance of flying in the statehouse is a political understanding of suction dredging as being like panning (but more serious diehard recreation than panning), then it changes the political turf on which the thing is playing out and it also changes what suction dredgers are doing. Pointedly, it accepts that those suction dredgers who are demanding things that are screwing it up for everyone else, will be marginalized. I am not saying that I have a personal objection to someone who's coming ahead at the end of the season and that's motivating them, I'm merely pointing out what the political reality is: suction dredging is being banned and the notion that you can buy a flag and a gun and make everything go the way you want it is a dead end.
The pump can be human-powered. That's about a 1/4 horsepower pump, if you've got a sturdy friend available. Obviously a small nozzle, but you can do stuff that panners can't do. With it being human powered, it's obviously recreation, not a deal where how much you get is a matter of how much horsepower you throw at it.
But wait! Half the knee-jerkers drive Priuses, and they're not real electrics, they have gasoline engines! And given the cost of manufacturing a Prius, the things are probably an environmental negative stacked up against a Honda Fit or Toyota Yaris, plain vanilla cars that do the job and save you gobs of money by not having to "make a statement".
So in addition to a human-powered pump, you can use an electric powered pump run by batteries not connected to a recharging source other than solar panels. And the batteries have to weigh less than (say) 100 pounds. This is kind of like the nozzle thing, it's arbitrary, but people can agree on what it actually is, and that's an essential. As everyone knows, rechargeable battery technology is not up against a brick wall, but it is a challenging set of compromises which serve as equalizers. Lead-acid wet cells still power golf carts, and lithium cells would power cars if anybody could afford enough lithium to do the job. In the field, 100 pounds of batteries limits either the size of the nozzle or the amount of time you can spend underwater. (Oversimplification, but that's the most fundamental tradeoff.) Since this is a recreational activity (remember!), that sort of tradeoff and the others that go along with it are just part of the territory. If you want a set of rules that draw the line at how much gold you can get for dollar invested, no such set of rules is possible, and in the context of recreational activity it's even irrelevant.
Now about that solar thing... solar (unlike other recharging sources) is allowed to run in parallel with the battery. Good panels put out about 1 horsepower of juice per 70 square feet. That's twice the area of a legal minimum bathroom floor including the area occupied by the water appliances. At present day prices, that's about $3,000 worth of solar panels, installed in full sun and aimed more or less at the sun. To put this in perspective, a 300 amp-hour 12 volt battery (big lead-acid, I'm guessing 50 pounds?) can deliver 1 horsepower for about 5 hours and you can probably get one for less than $100.
The technological beauty of the battery and/or solar thing is that it represents a flexible horsepower compromise, the economics of which preclude commercial mining but which encourage creativity in recreational mining, even to the point of advancing power management technology, a subject matter very dear to Silicon Valley (which still has some political clout). The power problems faced by suction dredging under that set of limitations serve as a model for many power management problems around the world, problems that until now have mostly been fought at the less than 100 watt (approx. 1/7 horsepower) level. The other end of the deal has been the "living off-grid" model with a roof covered with $10,000 or more in solar cells and a highly specialized electric system, not exactly a model for a world in which there aren't going to be very many houses in rural areas off-grid and owned by people who are so wealthy that they can do a conventional off-grid thing. The future of electric power worldwide is less horsepower and more independence and acceptance of the fact the grid isn't available 24 hours a day guaranteed. Recreational mining as I've described above is a great app for development of the future of global power, and it's less than 200 miles away from Silicon Valley.
You folks in California, this is up to you. The center of Silicon Valley, the home of the California Mother Lode, the center of the suction dredging controversy, a statewide political climate favorable to environmental issues expressed in the right way, and an economic crisis demanding that someone or someones come up with things that economic sense for the future, initiatives that can actually be funded.
Economic crises happen because nobody can figure out how to spend money in a way that makes profit; or, they can but they haven't got the money. What I have proposed is an economic initiative that makes sense on a global scale and the money to drive its development will come from recreational miners who are begging for the right to spend the money out of their own pockets!
***************
And that's my spiel du jour. Those who wish to argue with me, I suggest remembering who it is that is combatting suction dredging, and it isn't me! I hope there's some serious debate over how to deal with the political realities and come up with solutions that can benefit everyone.
--Dave J.
I am not involved with suction dredging and so don't know how practical this might be. Obviously it won't replace 5 HP motors. But it might be a compromise that works as opposed to one where you want to win a fight that you ain't gonna win. So hear me out, this is (as far as I know) an out-of-the box idea in a place where the in-the-box ideas don't seem to be making much headway.
*********************
Does suction dredging harm fish habitat? Heck, I don't know, there arguments on both sides. But no politician (as far as I know) has the guts to argue that gold panning harms fish habitat. And, in the big picture of fish habitat, only a few areas are worthwhile for gold suction dredging so obviously suction dredging is not the new Monitor and booming environmental wasteland. I regard fish habitat as worth protecting, and simply on the basis of area affected by recreational gold suction dredging, the activity probably has little overall impact even if locally it's a mess (which I'm not arguing that it is because I don't know, I'm pointing out that the knee-jerk environmentalist argument that it does create a local disaster area can be accepted for the sake of argument and still not lead to a conclusion that the activity should be banned.)
Accepting the knee-jerk env-arg just to break the ice, can possibly lead to fruitful discussion about balance between hypothetical environmental destruction of a minimal nature balanced against another activity. The problem the knee-jerk environmentalists will have with this, is that they don't see a social value in the "other activity", and the objective of the knee-jerkers is to preserve and reclaim a past which realistically speaking has no identifiable "ideal state" which could be maintained as a status quo. Environments change even in the absence of human activity, and knee-jerk environmentalists themselves are human activity who for the most part (if I may be permitted some hyperbole) do not live like primitive aborigines in balance with environment. I doubt that one could find an honest one among them, it's all hypocrisy.
A person can be a devout environmentalist and still despise the knee-jerk fundamentalists of the movement. Unfortunately the knee-jerk club is obsessed with being in control of everyone else and that obsession drives them to positions of power. You may not like this but that's how it really is. You won't change what they are (since they're not really interested in science based reason, it's all about them being in control). But, they don't own the entire government, and getting something rather than nothing from the bureaucrats caught in the middle will probably require formulating a position that makes sense to almost anybody and disarms the knee-jerk club. Here goes. You won't like it, but consider the alternatives.
************
Begin with the argument that what is at stake is recreational mining. It's just another outdoor activity like many of the things that even the knee-jerk club like to do. Nobody enjoys the outdoors without leaving footprints.
I don't live in California any more, but so many people do recreational panning in California (and the activity has so much business support in the Mother Lode country) that I suppose recreational panning is pretty much untouched from an environmentalist perspective. The restrictions that exist are (I suppose) property issues which is legally a whole different animal.
When you put the activity in the framework of recreation, then a bit of gain is fine (in the case of recreational mining it's just as essential as it is with fishing, nobody regards fishing as recreation in a place where catching fish is either impossible or illegal!). But it's not an economic activity like commercial fishing which is almost entirely prohibited in inland waters.
From the perspective of a knee-jerk clubber, motorized suction dredging is not recreational mining because it is motorized (the gas engine is doing your recreation for you) and because the "bigger is better" nature of suction dredging makes it look like an economic activity where the whole purpose is to come out ahead on the deal, as opposed to pursuing the golden dream as a form of entertainment.
I gather that in the past, there have been attempts to place a technological lid on suction dredging by limiting the size of the nozzle. Actually, I think that was a pretty good way of approaching the problem-- easy to define, easy to enforce-- but as we all know that didn't make the controversy go away. There are still those gasoline engines that don't look like recreation, and worse yet look like polluters; and the suspicion that an honest citizen might actually find enough gold to pay for the supplies needed in the operation and have enough left over for a cup of coffee at the end of the season. .....Did I mention gasoline engines? They hate gasoline engines!
The nozzle size thing might have worked in a rational world, but y'all are not dealing with rational people, you're dealing with the knee-jerk club for whom reason is irrelevant, and politicians who may not be opposed to reason but they're ill-informed and have trouble grasping issues that are framed in the wrong sort of arguments for their ears. The Mother Lode business establishment is substantial, and can provide economic arguments in favor of recreational mining. Most politicians understand money, at least as political pressure if not as something to be spent wisely.
That brings us back to the science & technology stuff that the knee-jerk environmentalist club is so fond of beating their drums on. They hate gasoline engines. Never mind all the reasons why this is so and why they're so fixated on it, you won't change that. The problem is how to use their fixation to disarm them.
Drop the whole thing about suction nozzle size. Politically, it didn't work. It wasn't something you could hang any kind of science on, it was arbitrary. It was eminently practical, but it didn't address the underlying philosophical political conflicts. I'm sorry.
Instead ...... get a grip....... take gasoline engines off the table. If you don't, they will, in fact a case could be made that they already have. You can suction dredge with Chrysler Hemi if you can suction dredge at all, but the problem is that suction dredging is being banned!
Gasoline engines are problems anyhow, especially with carbon monoxide and fuel and oil contamination issues.
Embrace the "recreation" argument. And I don't mean insincerely, I mean if it's all about coming ahead at the end of the season you are going to screw it up for everyone including yourself. Once you grasp the fact that what stands a chance of flying in the statehouse is a political understanding of suction dredging as being like panning (but more serious diehard recreation than panning), then it changes the political turf on which the thing is playing out and it also changes what suction dredgers are doing. Pointedly, it accepts that those suction dredgers who are demanding things that are screwing it up for everyone else, will be marginalized. I am not saying that I have a personal objection to someone who's coming ahead at the end of the season and that's motivating them, I'm merely pointing out what the political reality is: suction dredging is being banned and the notion that you can buy a flag and a gun and make everything go the way you want it is a dead end.
The pump can be human-powered. That's about a 1/4 horsepower pump, if you've got a sturdy friend available. Obviously a small nozzle, but you can do stuff that panners can't do. With it being human powered, it's obviously recreation, not a deal where how much you get is a matter of how much horsepower you throw at it.
But wait! Half the knee-jerkers drive Priuses, and they're not real electrics, they have gasoline engines! And given the cost of manufacturing a Prius, the things are probably an environmental negative stacked up against a Honda Fit or Toyota Yaris, plain vanilla cars that do the job and save you gobs of money by not having to "make a statement".
So in addition to a human-powered pump, you can use an electric powered pump run by batteries not connected to a recharging source other than solar panels. And the batteries have to weigh less than (say) 100 pounds. This is kind of like the nozzle thing, it's arbitrary, but people can agree on what it actually is, and that's an essential. As everyone knows, rechargeable battery technology is not up against a brick wall, but it is a challenging set of compromises which serve as equalizers. Lead-acid wet cells still power golf carts, and lithium cells would power cars if anybody could afford enough lithium to do the job. In the field, 100 pounds of batteries limits either the size of the nozzle or the amount of time you can spend underwater. (Oversimplification, but that's the most fundamental tradeoff.) Since this is a recreational activity (remember!), that sort of tradeoff and the others that go along with it are just part of the territory. If you want a set of rules that draw the line at how much gold you can get for dollar invested, no such set of rules is possible, and in the context of recreational activity it's even irrelevant.
Now about that solar thing... solar (unlike other recharging sources) is allowed to run in parallel with the battery. Good panels put out about 1 horsepower of juice per 70 square feet. That's twice the area of a legal minimum bathroom floor including the area occupied by the water appliances. At present day prices, that's about $3,000 worth of solar panels, installed in full sun and aimed more or less at the sun. To put this in perspective, a 300 amp-hour 12 volt battery (big lead-acid, I'm guessing 50 pounds?) can deliver 1 horsepower for about 5 hours and you can probably get one for less than $100.
The technological beauty of the battery and/or solar thing is that it represents a flexible horsepower compromise, the economics of which preclude commercial mining but which encourage creativity in recreational mining, even to the point of advancing power management technology, a subject matter very dear to Silicon Valley (which still has some political clout). The power problems faced by suction dredging under that set of limitations serve as a model for many power management problems around the world, problems that until now have mostly been fought at the less than 100 watt (approx. 1/7 horsepower) level. The other end of the deal has been the "living off-grid" model with a roof covered with $10,000 or more in solar cells and a highly specialized electric system, not exactly a model for a world in which there aren't going to be very many houses in rural areas off-grid and owned by people who are so wealthy that they can do a conventional off-grid thing. The future of electric power worldwide is less horsepower and more independence and acceptance of the fact the grid isn't available 24 hours a day guaranteed. Recreational mining as I've described above is a great app for development of the future of global power, and it's less than 200 miles away from Silicon Valley.
You folks in California, this is up to you. The center of Silicon Valley, the home of the California Mother Lode, the center of the suction dredging controversy, a statewide political climate favorable to environmental issues expressed in the right way, and an economic crisis demanding that someone or someones come up with things that economic sense for the future, initiatives that can actually be funded.
Economic crises happen because nobody can figure out how to spend money in a way that makes profit; or, they can but they haven't got the money. What I have proposed is an economic initiative that makes sense on a global scale and the money to drive its development will come from recreational miners who are begging for the right to spend the money out of their own pockets!
***************
And that's my spiel du jour. Those who wish to argue with me, I suggest remembering who it is that is combatting suction dredging, and it isn't me! I hope there's some serious debate over how to deal with the political realities and come up with solutions that can benefit everyone.
--Dave J.
