EPA to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants

Where were you for the last two years? I know, I wasn't paying enough attention to give him the credit and acknowledgment of accomplishments he deserves. I can admit that, can you? And Yes maybe there were some rather despicable moves, or lack there of, on the human rights front for Homosexuals, but that seems to be behind him.

 

Good news, but there's still a long way to go. Regulating 40% of emitters still leaves 60% unregulated, and the world cannot withstand unlimited greenhouse gases.

 

please, please, please, find a way for him to make montanans turn off their truck engines while they shop

 

might that be dangerous in a small town where i dress distinctively and everyone but me is heavily armed?

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anyways, it's nice to see a tiny bit of change i can believe in . . .

 

I read that article and am impressed that the government is keeping its promise to lower U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

I want to take this opportunity to present a theory that I read about not too long ago in a science fiction novel, "State of Fear" written by the late Michael Crichton. "State of Fear" has a cast of characters that challenge the theory of global warming. The author has citations and footnotes throughout the text and does his part to refute the claim that global warming is a crisis. It basically calls the alarmists out on the carpet...

This morning after reading your post and the linked article I found this site http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/16260/Michael_Crichton_Is_Right.html which listed the following from "State of Fear":

• most of the warming in the past century occurred before 1940, before CO2 emissions could have been a major factor (p. 84);

• temperatures fell between 1940 and 1970 even as CO2 levels increased (p. 86);

• temperature readings from reporting stations outside the U.S. are poorly maintained and staffed and probably inaccurate; those in the U.S., which are probably more accurate, show little or no warming trend (pp. 88-89);

• “full professors from MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Duke, Virginia, Colorado, UC Berkeley, and other prestigious schools ... the former president of the National Academy of Sciences ... will argue that global warming is at best unproven, and at worst pure fantasy" (p. 90);

• temperature sensors on satellites report much less warming in the upper atmosphere (which the theory of global warming predicts should warm first) than is reported by temperature sensors on the ground (p. 99);

• data from weather balloons agree with the satellites (p. 100);

• “No one can say for sure if global warming will result in more clouds, or fewer clouds,” yet cloud cover plays a major role in global temperatures (p. 187);

• Antarctica “as a whole is getting colder, and the ice is getting thicker” (p. 193, sources listed on p. 194);

• The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica has been melting for the past 6,000 years (p. 195, p. 200-201); “Greenland might lose its ice pack in the next thousand years” (p. 363);

• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is “a huge group of bureaucrats and scientists under the thumb of bureaucrats,” and its 1995 report was revised “after the scientists themselves had gone home” (p. 245-246);

• James Hansen’s predictions of global warming during a Congressional committee hearing in 1988, which launched the global warming scare, were wrong by 200 percent (.35 degrees Celsius over the next 10 years versus the actual increase of .11 degrees); in 1998, Hansen said long-term predictions of climate are impossible (pp. 246-247);

• there has been no increase in extreme weather events (.e.g., floods, tornadoes, drought) over the past century or in the past 15 years; computer models used to forecast climate change do not predict more extreme weather (p. 362, 425-426);

• temperature readings taken by terrestrial reporting stations are rising because they are increasingly surrounded by roads and buildings which hold heat, the “urban heat island” effect (p. 368-369); methods used to control for this effect fail to reduce temperatures enough to offset it (p. 369-376);

• changes in land use and urbanization may contribute more to changes in the average ground temperature than “global warming” caused by human emissions (p. 383, 388);

• temperature data are suspect because they have been adjusted and manipulated by scientists who expect to find a warming trend (p. 385-386);

• carbon dioxide has increased a mere 60 parts per million since 1957, a tiny change in the composition of the atmosphere (p. 387);

• increased levels of CO2 act a fertilizer, promoting plant growth and contributing to the shrinking of the Sahara desert (p. 421);

• the spread of malaria is unaffected by global warming (pp. 421-422, footnotes on 422);

• sufficient data exist to measure changes in mass for only 79 of the 160,000 glaciers in the world (p. 423);

• the icecap on Kilimanjaro has been melting since the 1800s, long before human emissions could have influenced the global climate, and satellites do not detect a warming trend in the region (p. 423); deforestation at the foot of the mountain is the likely explanation for the melting trend (p. 424);

• sea levels have been rising at the rate of 10 to 20 centimeters (four to eight inches) per hundred years for the past 6,000 years (p. 424);

• El Niños are global weather patterns unrelated to global warming and on balance tend to be beneficial by extending growing seasons and reducing the use of heating fuels (p. 426);

• the Kyoto Protocol would reduce temperatures by only 0.04 degrees Celsius in the year 2100 (p. 478);

• a report by scientists published in Science concludes “there is no known technology capable of reducing [global] carbon emissions ... totally new and undiscovered technology is required” (p. 479);

• change, not stability, is the defining characteristic of the global climate, with naturally occurring events (e.g., volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis) much more likely to affect climate than anything humans do (p. 563); and

• computer simulations are not real-world data and cannot be relied on to produce reliable forecasts (p. 566)

Without going on too much longer I will state my position. I find it very frustrating that there doesn't seem to be much that I personally can do without causing air pollution by driving. I also will acknowledge that global warming is not the only problem caused by air pollution. I think people should take good care of the environment and incorporate a minimum impact philosophy when planning their affairs, but in the way of smog how much can really be done?

 

Are we going to continue to see flip flopping environmental regulation depending upon which administration is in office?

 

the less you do, the better

i don't drive, try to buy used goods only, try to buy locally-produced food, set the furnace at 60 [lowest it'll go] despite the damn cats, energy bulbs, blah blah blah

it probably helps about as much as, well, i doubt it makes much difference at all, but . . .

what else can you do?

i wish the people who put their creative energies into getting the sheep to buy crap and eat crap and do things and go places would put it into getting them to stop

then you might see some difference, maybe?

edit to note that my sig pic is a significant waste of bandwidth!

 

count on it

 

Thats more than likely gonna happen. What we have heard about the new tractors that are going to come out is that they will have emmisions and also will shut themselves off after idling for 5 minuits. Im guessing it will probobly be on gas engines in the future as well.

 

Yep...Republican party is home to big gas and oil and the coal industry, both of which completly deny global warming.

 

The law of the land then is the source of contradiction, not surety as advertised. Belief in the rule of law is yet another failed religion.

We have the senses and the technology to truly learn and deftly negotiate our own nature if we were not so terrified of questioning tradition. Laws are not in effect to unravel conflict but to contain it. Environmental conflict is institutionalized, built into the system. It is that system and not the choice of specific technology that is the real polluter.

Looking for compliance, as a focus, seriously compromises situational awareness.
This is how it is possible for an administration to circumvent many helpful rules by selectively enforcing statutes.

 

North Dakota gets a lot of its power from coal plants. In fact there is a new one being built out west someplace. I got a chance to read part of an article in the MinnKota Messenger which is a news letter put out by Minnkota power to its customers. Im on Nodak and we get one too butt the aritcal stated that global warming was over and we were now entering a period of global cooling. This was all of course studied by one of "their scientests". The big problem is most people up here do belive this because North Dakota is cooling not warming up. They are not seeing the difference between global warming and localized weather. We have endured a whole summer of negitive ads and propaganda here. Its all anti alternative energy, the coal industry is big in western ND as well as the oil fields being reopened. Theres even been a couple people in this area that tried to fight the windtowers.
I guess the thing is now is how does one go about undoing the brainwashing process and properly educating the people?
Another thing is that this the "lame duck" session...So whats gonna happen when gov gets back in full swing? Are they going to repeal the bill? And what else is going to be undermined?

 

Perhaps a rule of best practices supported by the data. That rule would certainly cause us to abandon the current system.

 

similar situation here

coal thinking is boom town thinking, like the thinking about oil around williston, and the locals all think they're gonna make a killing somehow

real estate prices and rents went nuts up there a few years ago, which is why we moved south

wind? a few farmers get small leases, there's a small, short temporary influx of workers, no new millionaires

face it snowtigger, we live amongst some of the most short-sighted people in the whole short-sighted nation . . .