SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said on Thursday he has sent recommendations from his review of more than two dozen national monuments to President Donald Trump, indicating that some could be scaled back to allow for more hunting and fishing and economic development.
The recommendations follow a 120-day study of 27 national monuments across the country, created by presidents since 1996, that Trump ordered in April as part of his broader effort to increase development on federal lands.
The review has cheered energy, mining, ranching and timber advocates but has drawn widespread criticism and threats of lawsuits from conservation groups and the outdoor recreation industry.
There were fears that Zinke would recommend the outright elimination of some of the monuments on the list, but on Thursday, speaking to the Associated Press in Billings, Montana, he said he will not recommend eliminating any.
Zinke said in a statement that the recommendations would "provide a much needed change for the local communities who border and rely on these lands for hunting and fishing, economic development, traditional uses, and recreation." He did not specify which monuments he plans to recommend be scaled back.
The Associated Press reported that Zinke said he would recommend changing the boundaries for a "handful" of sites.
If you're taking millions of acres off the table for one site, you fail at knowing the definition of a monument.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-interior-monuments-idUSKCN1B41YA
Also at RT, CNN, The Washington Post and The Hill.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @01:39PM
If you can't honestly evaluate other peoples' opinions then what's the point of having an opinion yourself? First, where's the straw man? I'll note in the AC I replied to earlier, there was a lot of rambling about Columbus and NASA's misspent youth. for the former, the poster felt the need to speak of Columbus's lies after his first expedition - like he'd tell a head of state and his chief sponsor something they didn't want to hear. That's a typical con activity, though understandable under the circumstances. I suppose we could ask what would happen if NASA tried the same thing (after all they faked the Moon landings in the first place /sarc)? The answer is "spinoffs" [wikipedia.org] where NASA claims anything and everything with even the slightest taint of NASA funding as a product of the space program. Doesn't seem to help their situation.
Then there's the complaints about NASA. Most of the post is about how NASA is a political tool. The obvious question here is if space is so important, then how could that happen? Answer: the initial assumption is wrong - space isn't so important to us collectively. Sure, it's immensely important to you, but you're not giving NASA 20 billion a year to do the stuff you want it to do.
NASA didn't bother to return to the Moon because they had the attitude of "Been there. Done that." (Lunar exploration has been remarkably paltry since Apollo) They didn't bother to make two more Hubble-equivalent telescopes because they already had one up there and a replacement coming (James Webb Space Telescope) for which these telescopes would have threatened the viability of the new telescope. So to the people holding the purse strings (and probably a good portion of NASA's workforce), those two extra space telescopes had negative value! Of course, they're not going to fly them.
SLS is just funding to keep the former Shuttle supply chain happy and campaign donations flowing - they don't have an interest in doing anything beyond spending that money. It'll probably fly at least once, just to save face, but it'll be vastly more expensive than Falcon Heavy without much additional capabilities or missions to rationalize its existence. And no, you don't know that NASA's "grand visions" will result in a thing on Mars - hasn't yet and any plan for a serious ramp up is conveniently far in the future, many political cycles away from reality.
Bottom line is that NASA is a dead end with the present approach and it's been that way for almost 50 years because space isn't important to enough of us on Earth and unlikely to ever be. The solution is not propaganda; it's not lies; it's not some sort of manifest destiny ideology. The solution is more, lower cost infrastructure - things like lower cost launch to orbit (the key to "cheap access to space"), orbital propellant depots, space tugs, etc. Build the infrastructure so that the private world can give it a spin. Once the size of the problem has been reduced to the point where a relatively small private group can do credible development in space, then it won't matter that space isn't immensely valuable to the rest of the world. Similarly, even for the NASA-obsessed, lower thresholds and costs to viable missions means a greater chance that real work gets done in space rather the continued token, status stuff that NASA has done for most of its existence.
In the case of Columbus, his exploration wasn't the culmination of some massive state project, it was just a three ship trip which could be easily funded by a few rich patrons. Further exploration and eventual colonization/conquest was just as well done by small groups as it was by state-backed efforts. We need to get past the current state of massive efforts for paltry gains just like the Europeans did back during the exploration of the New World.