Bush The Environmentalist

[DealMonkey]

I think the real question here is: Do we want to be wrong about global warming? Seriously, I sense a huge polarization on the issue with many (mostly Republicans) dismissing the problem out of hand. Tell me what the problem is exactly with attempting to have as little of a footprint on our environment as humanly possible? What is the problem exactly with cleaning up industry, rolling back pollution and lowering C02 emissions? I think the R's simply object to environmentally-friendly policy on the basis that money will have to be spent and/or profits lost. A rather myopic stance if you ask me.

 

[glenn1]

I'd rather face global warming than submit to the lifestyle the environmentalist movement would force on us if they had their way.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: glenn1
I'd rather face global warming than submit to the lifestyle the environmentalist movement would force on us if they had their way.

I am concerned about global warming. What do I want to force on you?

Bit too broad of a brush, Glenn.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: Perknose
Wow, this from a guy who supposedly just wrote his master's thesis? Introducing new (in this case, human) input into ANY equilibrium can upset said state. Any equilibrium is not an equilibrium NO MATTER WHAT!

Example: The equilibrium of two equally sized and spaced kids on a see-saw. Absent movement, they remain poised in equilibrium. Put another kid on one end and that equilibrium is destroyed. It will NOT "return one way or the other (that's the whole idea of equilibrium)."

If my tax dollars helped in part to underwrite your education, you owe me a refund.

If you want me to give you a physics lecture, an environmental engineering lecture, a chemical engineering lecture, and a biomedical engineering lecture, then you're going to have to shell out some money. You can spin any statement out of any post to suit your end, so try taking something in context.

There are two major types of equilibrium discussed in physics: stable and unstable. The climate, atmospheric gas concentrations, and ocean water concentrations discussed here would typically be described as being in stable equilibriums. That means applying a stress will force the system to correct itself. If, on the other hand, the climate, atmosphere, and oceans existed in unstable equilibriums, even a small CO2 change would propagate until CO2 was the prevalent gas rather than nitrogen. Billions of years have forged this balance, tempering the environment we know today to be a robust, stable equilibrium that only a large change (or outside force/cause) should be able to shift.

Now, I believe you owe me two minutes of my life back that it took me to write that.

There are many many atmospheric scientists who have far more knowledge than you or I who are concerned. If it were as simple as you make it out to be, and you had the answer, you would not only have a PhD, but a Nobel.

Which is exactly the point I was trying to make. **Regulating without more complete knowledge is costing companies money with possibly no benefit** I can't state it any more clearly.

I think the real question here is: Do we want to be wrong about global warming? Seriously, I sense a huge polarization on the issue with many (mostly Republicans) dismissing the problem out of hand. Tell me what the problem is exactly with attempting to have as little of a footprint on our environment as humanly possible? What is the problem exactly with cleaning up industry, rolling back pollution and lowering C02 emissions? I think the R's simply object to environmentally-friendly policy on the basis that money will have to be spent and/or profits lost. A rather myopic stance if you ask me.

There is nothing wrong with leaving a small footprint on the environment. However, what tradeoffs are you willing to make to let companies do this? Are you willing to pay three times as much for your electricity or for gas? Are you willing for factories to lay off workers to pay for additional air scrubbers or water treatment facilities? Nothing is free. I strongly suggest reading about how tightly the US already controls air and water pollution/emissions and comparing to other countries. The water put out by our industries actually CLEANS the rivers that they feed into in almost all cases. "Removing" CO2 from air from fossil fuel plants is simply not that easy, as it is one of the products of a combustion reaction (fuel + oxygen -> CO2 and water). Even if we are to remove it, what are we going to do with it, bottle it up and bury it? It can be reacted again to form other, more harmful substances, but that doesn't really help.

 

[feralkid]

Originally posted by: jjzelinski
I was under the impression it was widely accepted that we should still be in a "cooling phase" as far as natural climactic changes and ice ages were concerned.

I think you meant to say "climatic", he-he.

 

[wirelessenabled]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard


It's like using carbon dating on something from the 1950's, despite the fact that it's only really accurate to +/- 5000 years.

Carbon-14 dating is a lot more accurate than +/- 5000 years. The half life is only 5730 years with a sigma squared of 40 years. There are accurate calibration curves developed for this type of dating from tree rings on bristlecone pine trees. I tried to find a definitive link on accuracy but didn't. Reading many articles my impression is that carbon-14 dating is accurate to within a couple of std deviations or a 100 years or so.

 

[CycloWizard]

I was just exaggerating to get my point across.

 

[dudeguy]

Originally posted by: Perknose
Buried inside another <a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08...hp">story</a> is the shocking revelation that Bush doesn't even seem to know about his own administraton's positional flip-flop on global warming (whatever you do, Mr. Secretary, don't tell the Prez! <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif" border="0">):<blockquote>quote:
<hr>On environmental issues, Mr. Bush appeared unfamiliar with an administration report delivered to Congress on Wednesday that indicated that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases were the only likely explanation for global warming over the last three decades. Previously, Mr. Bush and other officials had emphasized uncertainties in understanding the causes and consequences of global warming.<BR><BR><b>The new report was signed by Mr. Bush's secretaries of energy and commerce and his science adviser. Asked why the administration had changed its position on what causes global warming, Mr. Bush replied, "Ah, we did? I don't think so."<hr></blockquote>

well they dont call him either a retard or the toxic texan for nothing!

 

[dudeguy]

Originally posted by: jjzelinski
Not willing to "sign up" for the new york times just to read an article. Not to sound naive but was that quote for real?

may i suggest www.bugmenot.com or in this case just britney; britney

 

[conjur]

Bush Record: New Priorities in Environment
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09...campaign/14enviro.html

Every fall, after raising their young near Teshekpuk Lake and the Colville River, tens of thousands of geese and tundra swans leave the North Slope of Alaska for more southerly shores. Some end their journey at the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in the flatlands of North Carolina.

Both habitats could be transformed if current Bush administration initiatives come to pass. The birds would have oil rigs as neighbors in Alaska and be greeted by Navy jets simulating carrier takeoffs and landings in North Carolina.

That such projects could bracket the birds' path is not surprising in light of the priorities of the administration. Over the last three and a half years, federal officials have accelerated resource development on public lands. They have also pushed to eliminate regulatory hurdles for military and industrial projects.

From the start, Bush officials challenged the status quo and revised the traditional public-policy calculus on environmental decisions. They put an instant hold on many Clinton administration regulations, and the debates over those issues and others are intensely polarized.

The administration has sought to increase the harvesting of energy and other resources on public lands, to seek cooperative ways to reduce pollution, to free the military from environmental restrictions and to streamline - opponents say gut - regulatory and enforcement processes.

In a recent interview, Michael O. Leavitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, summed up the Bush administration's philosophy. "There is no environmental progress without economic prosperity," Mr. Leavitt said. "Once our competitiveness erodes, our capacity to make environmental gains is gone. There is nothing that promotes pollution like poverty."

The administration's approach has provoked a passionate response. Asked about his expectations in the event of President Bush's re-election, Senator James M. Jeffords, the Vermont independent who is the ranking minority member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, wrote in an e-mail message: "I expect the Bush administration to continue their assault on regulations designed to protect public health and the environment. I expect the Bush administration to continue underfunding compliance and enforcement activities."

Mr. Jeffords concluded, "I expect the Bush administration will go down in history as the greatest disaster for public health and the environment in the history of the United States."

For many environmental groups, Mr. Bush's legacy was assured in his first year, thanks to highly publicized decisions that effectively repudiated Clinton administration positions. Mr. Bush backed off a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide and abandoned the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. Then the administration pushed, unsuccessfully, for a law allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It scrapped the phaseout of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park and briefly dropped a Clinton proposal to cut the permissible level of arsenic in drinking water by 80 percent.

The cumulative effect was striking. The decisions sought to reverse environmental action for which there was broad support. Polls by The New York Times in mid-2001 and late 2002 consistently showed public opposition to drilling in the Arctic refuge. A CBS poll in the same period showed that, by ratios of better than two to one, those polled said that environmental protection was more important than energy production.

The outcry ensured that some Bush administration initiatives favorable to the cause of environmental groups received little notice. They include the E.P.A.'s decision to force General Electric to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to remove PCB's in the Hudson River, a cleanup that has been delayed; legislation speeding the cleanup of urban industrial sites known as brownfields; increases in financing for private land set aside for conservation of animals and their habitats; and the first limits for diesel emissions in trucks and off-road vehicles.

Continued

Apparently, Leavitt thinks poverty is the biggest problem behind pollution.

wow.