More Coprolite Anyone?

By Rich Kozlovich

Yesterday I linked an article about Daryl Hannah being arrested for protesting the Keystone XL pipeline delivering crude oil from Canada. Now we find that the radicals on the government’s payroll in the State Department, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Oceans have taken up this issue because of some endangered beetle, apparently as a way of stopping this pipeline. But take hope…..they have an 81 page ‘recovery plan’ for this beetle.

Interestingly, the cause of this beetle’s decline isn't clearly understood, and yet they could still come up with an 81 page ‘recovery plan’. How can anyone possibly develop a ‘recovery’ plan without that basic piece of information? For all they know their ‘plan’ could kill the rest off if they don’t know what is causing the decline in the first place.

That’s just like medieval doctors telling everyone how to cure the Black Death when they didn’t have a clue as to what it was or how it was contracted. I bet they had whole books on the subject. And they have the chutspah to claim that this decision is a "scientific" decision and not a "policy" decision. 

George Washington’s doctors decided he had a serious case of quinsy, which means “to strangle a dog” in Greek. They used really creative verbiage in those days, and did so probably because they didn’t have clue about what they were talking about.  But they needed to sound like they really knew what they were talking about.

Their treatments included burning the back of his neck, bleeding him of five pints of blood (the average person only has about 10 pints), and feeding him some kind of mercury compound as a purgative. 

And all of this was for a serious sore throat, but whether this was serious and life threatening or not, would any of this voodoo medicine helped? No, and in fact, I think it is perfectly reasonable to believe that every bit of this witch doctoring hastened his demise at the age of 67!

Allegedly he even asked them to bleed him the last time and thanked them for their efforts. Why? Because they were "educated professionals". “Eventually Washington ordered his doctors to cease their barbarisms and let him go in peace”. Among his final words were; “Doctor, I die hard, but I am not afraid to go” At this point he was probably in so much misery he couldn’t wait to go.

When you don’t know what you are dealing with how can you come up with an 81 page recovery plan?   And if you don’t know what you are dealing with how do you know that you aren’t making the problem worse and hastening their demise?   And is it reasonable that all economic activity should be stopped until they do know what they are talking about? All this for a beetle!

At this point I think it is resonable to question the "science" versus "policy" aspect of this decision.  At this point I think it would be interesting to recap the Word of the Day from August 26. Coprolite - Fossilized excrement.