Bee: What happens when a debater takes a quote out of context, or only includes a partial quote in order to characterize it as misleading?
The full quote of the second factual finding of Prop F that SN quoted from is:
"The primary source of water for the City of San Francisco is the Tuolomne River. Many people believe the city's primary water source is the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park because the system is called the Hetch Hetchy system. In fact, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is just one of nine reservoirs that store water for San Francisco." [emphasis added]
What the partial quote left out is a very important piece: the distinction between the water and the storage tank. In draining HH, SF does NOT lose the water. The replacement process is one of finding storage capacity only. Difficult, maybe, bit a very different matter from losing the water itself in addition to the storage capacity.
Not to mention that the complete quote is 100% factually correct. And the irrigation water for Turlock Irrigation District etc is just as important and real as the SF municipal supply
I could run through similar problems with every single one of the Attachment A rebuttals that SN linked to, but the greater point is this. In any debate, "misleading" is the epithet cast by each side at the perfectly accurate statements of the other that support the wrong conclusion.
Case in point is Bee's concern about what it would cost to replace the HH hydro with dirty power. That assumes that the hydro couldn't be replaced with other clean renewable power. There is no reason for that assumption, other than the "misleading" statements of the opponents. In fact, such renewables are in development now, and will be available on a massive scale well before 2035.
Every argument and factual assertion is misleading if it leads to the conclusion you don't want others to reach. As such, calling something "misleading" is a pretty useless bit of rhetoric. The fact that I consider something misleading is trivial compared to the actual specific merits of whatever argument I am dealing with. And "lies": that's the strongest epithet of all, and really demands specific identification and backup. I haven't seen an example of that in this discussion, although the accusation has been flung with some abandon.
So SN has done us a great service by pointing at least to a specific document that articulates the source and basis of these assertions of lies and misleading statements. That document itself, however (which is apparently an advocacy piece by or defending the SF PUC, but one would like to know) is guilty of at least as much sophistry as it accuses Prop F of relying on. And of course it deals only with the relatively petty distractions of the findings preamble of the proposition, most of which are a distraction from the real issue; would it be a good idea to have a plan.
