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You know, you only serve to make yourself look like a nutjob completely detached from reality when you spout off nonsense.

It's not worth his time to bother to help you pull your head out of your ass. Sure he might look to you like he's a nutjob, but you demonstrate that you have little clue or perception in the matter. For example, Montana most likely has a lot less superfund sites than California because they have less population and less industry (oh look, Montana has 8 Superfund sites as compared to California's 90 Superfund sites). You said some nonsense, something about air pollution and coal burning plants. My guess is that California could always require, just as the rest of the US, the coal burning plant fit scrubbers and other pollution control devices. Then you wouldn't have to worry about air pollution (it'd be well below other California sources like backyard grills and gas powered leaf blowers).

Would any right-wing nutjobs care to explain why it is that the most environmentally stringent cities and states just HAPPEN to be the most prosperous?

It's just California that happens to have this remarkable property of environmental hysteria adjacent to prosperity. And they're well on their way to killing the golden goose.

"commondreams.org" is not a reliable source, sorry. Nor is "kicktheoilabit.org" Your mms.gov links do not support your spurious allegations in any way, shape, or form. Are you just trolling or are you deranged enough to think those links are actually relevant?

Perhaps you'd prefer the Congressional Research Service report titled "Oil and Gas Tax Subsidies: Current Status and Analysis" which describes the tax breaks due to amortization and domestic manufacturing tax deduction (IRC section 199).

The mms.gov link states "Two federal sales of offshore oil and natural gas leases in the Eastern and Central Gulf of Mexico attracted more than $3.7 billion in high bids" which is exactly what I said. Are you on drugs?

There are many reasons, IMO

• We use most of it. As of 2007 data, we use 134.400billion gallons/year, almost as much as the next 25 nations combined
• Transportation - costs of shipping, storing, the risks associated (it is both a volatile liquid and a volatile market!)
• Added perks (42gallons of oil/barrel, only ~20 becomes gas, the other is kerosene, heating oil, with the ability, if I understand the process correctly to adjust these ratios to meet demand. Example more heating oil in winter, more gas (relatively) in the summer.
• US standards for gas are likely different than other countries (see next point)
• Weird Foreign Refinery Rules
• Like someone else mentioned, volatility in other refinery countries.

There are likely more, but this is not my area of expertise.

Sources:

Prizes help spur research towards specific, known, targeted goals. That's not a bad thing (ethical research is almost never a bad thing) but it's only a small part of the problem, and probably not the most important part.

So called "pie in the sky" research with no application in sight seems to be increasingly difficult to justify to those with the purse strings. If someone isn't solving a problem, defending it as worthwhile is difficult. From the article:

"Dangling prizes in front of innovators has benefits not found in the typical funding process. By offering a prize, government pays for success instead of rewarding a research proposal, as occurs with grants."

Research is not just success - in fact, it's not even mostly success. You can't budget just to pay for the successes, or no one will be able to afford to go after the prizes. Plus, failures can often teach as much or more than successes.

Fortunately, Kalil acknowledges that prizes are not all that's needed. Personally I am wary of ANY prizes being introduced since there is a temptation to be "budget minded" in the future by paring down to just the prizes, which sound good while being less effective in reality. Also, institutions might pressure researchers to head for goals that have a prize rather than pursuing something more interesting to the researcher.

Perhaps a good summary of recent problems can be found at the end of this ( http://www.ncseonline.org/Updates/cms.cfm?id=985 ) article:

"Optimism about the current proposal to double the NSF budget in ten years is tempered by the failure of recent legislation to double the NSF budget in five years. The National Science Authorization Act of 2002, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush, called for a doubling of the NSF budget from FY 2002 to FY 2007. The annual appropriations bills have fallen far short of the doubling path specified in the NSF Authorization Act. The FY 2007 budget request for NSF is nearly $4 billion below the level authorized in the last doubling initiative."

There has been some movement in the House: http://www.ncseonline.org/Updates/cms.cfm?id=1182 but now we will see what happens in reality. Apparently it is possible to sound good without actually putting the money into it, we'll hope that doesn't happen again. The recent shift in power in the House and Senate might be helpful - we will see.

I don't know if the US as a population is supportive of research though. I would be very interested in a survey which attempts to gauge the public's interest and support for general research funding - does anybody know of a good one?

Prizes help spur research towards specific, known, targeted goals. That's not a bad thing (ethical research is almost never a bad thing) but it's only a small part of the problem, and probably not the most important part.

So called "pie in the sky" research with no application in sight seems to be increasingly difficult to justify to those with the purse strings. If someone isn't solving a problem, defending it as worthwhile is difficult. From the article:

"Dangling prizes in front of innovators has benefits not found in the typical funding process. By offering a prize, government pays for success instead of rewarding a research proposal, as occurs with grants."

Research is not just success - in fact, it's not even mostly success. You can't budget just to pay for the successes, or no one will be able to afford to go after the prizes. Plus, failures can often teach as much or more than successes.

Fortunately, Kalil acknowledges that prizes are not all that's needed. Personally I am wary of ANY prizes being introduced since there is a temptation to be "budget minded" in the future by paring down to just the prizes, which sound good while being less effective in reality. Also, institutions might pressure researchers to head for goals that have a prize rather than pursuing something more interesting to the researcher.

Perhaps a good summary of recent problems can be found at the end of this ( http://www.ncseonline.org/Updates/cms.cfm?id=985 ) article:

"Optimism about the current proposal to double the NSF budget in ten years is tempered by the failure of recent legislation to double the NSF budget in five years. The National Science Authorization Act of 2002, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush, called for a doubling of the NSF budget from FY 2002 to FY 2007. The annual appropriations bills have fallen far short of the doubling path specified in the NSF Authorization Act. The FY 2007 budget request for NSF is nearly $4 billion below the level authorized in the last doubling initiative."

There has been some movement in the House: http://www.ncseonline.org/Updates/cms.cfm?id=1182 but now we will see what happens in reality. Apparently it is possible to sound good without actually putting the money into it, we'll hope that doesn't happen again. The recent shift in power in the House and Senate might be helpful - we will see.

I don't know if the US as a population is supportive of research though. I would be very interested in a survey which attempts to gauge the public's interest and support for general research funding - does anybody know of a good one?

A) Many services ("essential" is such a poor term) were still running -- such as prisons, Treasury, defense, medical care, traffic control, weather reports, emergency and rescue services, FDA, etc
B) It takes a while for some Federal services to get noticed by the general populace. Most services one sees in every day use are Local/State services. People were affected for travel and medical research grants, as well as furloughed contractors.

An easy to find analysis in google was
http://www.ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/governmen t/gov-26.cfm ("Shutdown of the Federal Government: Causes, Effects, and Process" "Sharon S. Gressle")
http://www.cnn.com/US/9511/debt_limit/11-18/wrap/i mpact.html - (anecdotal stories, etc)

The biggest thing about 'shutting down the government' showed is that if you don't really shut it all down, people think, "Most everything is working! Why do we need those people?" when lots of the government is really still humming along.

http://www.ncseonline.org/Updates/page.cfm?FID=416 6

Important -- checking what we're told.

You quoted Maduro as saying the ozone statistics are based only on one 12 year period showing change, and the previous one shows no change.

Th
That was true, twenty years ago.

QUOTE:

ROWLAND
"... people had been asking since 1974, "Is there any evidence for ozone losses over the United States or Europe?" And, for 11 years, statisticians had been doing very elaborate calculations and had always concluded that no evidence for any ozone loss had been detected."

So -- for early 1980s -- Molina confirms what you were told about the statistics.

Maduro's giving you old info based on the false premise that ozone depletion must logically happen all year round, despite observations to the contrary.

The crux of the matter is that ozone depletion happens in a brief period when the sun reaches the polar stratosphere after the long cold dark six months of winter.

Looking at the statistics by month rather than averaged by year -- and since the 1930s rather than for just 11 years -- showed the ozone depletion clearly.

That was done -- 20 years ago. Maduro's telling you something disproven two decades ago.

And that happened just after the U-2 aircraft flew through the polar stratosphere during several weeks just as the sun came up in the spring, and documented the sudden loss of ozone.

The quote above and continuation below are my excerpts from the full text, Roland and Molina's published speeches and collected references and discussion, found here:

http://www.ncseonline.org/NCSEconference/2000confe rence/Chafee/ChafeeMemorialLecture2000.pdf.

QUOTE

"... Neil Harris ... did some calculations for the long record since 1931 of ozone measurements at the permanent station in Arosa, Switzerland.

He divided the record into 1931-1969 and 1970-1986 and compared the before/after averages for each calendar month, and found that there had been less ozone over Arosa in the winter months after 1970 than before. Then, as part of a sub-group of the Ozone Trends Panel, we extended this to all of the ozone-measuring stations with records for at least 22 years, that is, for the length of two solar sunspot cycles [because it was known that ozone levels varied a little with sunspot activity].

These calculations were simply the average over the winter months for one 11-year period, and then for another period of 11 years, subtracting one from the other. Every station in the northern hemisphere north of 30 degrees N latitude had
shown less ozone in the second 11-year period than in the first.

The statisticians had missed this because they had assumed that if there were any ozone loss that it would be uniform all through the year. And it had been known for many years that the summer months had much less natural variation in ozone, so, if the summer had much less natural variation, then obviously, you should look at the times where a change would most easily be detectable. What the Ozone Trends Panel showed was that there was clearly a wintertime loss, and no significant evidence at that time for a loss during the summer. These calculations were the first evidence that ozone had been lost over heavily populated latitudes of the northern hemisphere.

MOLINA
The scientific evidence was really accumulating by that time. Here we have a statement from by a colleague of ours at the Ozone Trends Panel press conference on March 15, 1988, "We've found more than the smoking gun. We've found the corpse." So, no surprise, ten days later after all of these findings really became evident, the Dupont Company, the largest manufacturer of CFCs, changed their mind and decided they would no longer manufacture these compounds.

The scientific evidence was extremely clear. I believe that was a very important turning point for the chemical industry."

END QU

OK, I'll bite instead of modding you troll. What the hell are you thinking? Don't you realise the internet was developed in the public sector? Those universities and medical centers are the same early-adopting testbeds that created the infrastructure to allow you to bang out your jingoistic nonsense with your one free hand today. I presume, incidentally, that you are posting this using some kind of advanced gopher client, and not HTTP, since you don't appear to have heard of that particular European invention. Likewise, presumably you're not using any GNU products (MIT), Linux, Berkeley Unix, or anything else that might challenge your pickled-in-vinegar worldview. Jeez. You are a prime idiot. No doubt you will be happy to learn that George Bush, quite possibly an idol of yours, has quietly slashed NSF funding, as part of his war on science. Presumably this will not damage the future of the Internet, however, since I am sure that a fine libertarian like you was first in line to donate his Bush tax refund check to some private Internet Reseach Trust or other.

I quote:

"The National Science Foundation (NSF), suffering its first budget cut in years, will operate at 1.9% below FY 04 spending levels. The Foundation is funded at $5.47 billion, $105 million below last year and $232 million below the FY 05 request.

The budget cut affects the two major NSF accounts: Research & Related Activities (R&RA) and Education and Human Resources (EHR). The R&RA Account, which funds NSF's core research directorates and programs, falls to $4,220.56, $30.8 million (0.7%) below FY 04 funding levels and $200.95 million below the FY 05 request level. Funding decisions by directorate and program will be left to the discretion of NSF, pending Congressional approval. The EHR Account drops $97.56 million, or 10.4%, below FY 04 spending levels to $841.4 million."

"Metroliner Service between Boston and Washington, DC, makes a profit of about $5 per passenger".

Ok, the whole route loses money, but that particular service does make money. Needless to say, we should force Amtrak to become more efficient and provide service where it really is necessary.

While the poster said (paraphrasing) "The vast majority of scientists believe that there is global warming and that human activity IS a major factor",this report you cite is actually somewhat equivocal:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that global warming in the last 50 years is likely the result of increases in greenhouse gases, which accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community, the committee said. However, it also cautioned that uncertainties about this conclusion remain because of the level of natural variability inherent in the climate on time scales from decades to centuries, the questionable ability of models to simulate natural variability on such long time scales, and the degree of confidence that can be placed on estimates of temperatures going back thousands of years based on evidence from tree rings or ice cores.

• These are the top guys in their fields, and they make good statements based on real evidence, as opposed to the average /. posting...

The only policy recommendation you hear from the "average /. reader" is an immediate adherence to the Kyoto Treaty. A Treaty that will not do anything to decrease the CO2 surplus for the foreseeable future, but will certainly damage the economies of the industrialized nations.