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Two Powerful Blows Against Air Pollution Controls
The NYTimes reports from Washington on two separate actions on Friday that, between them, have halted Bush administration clean-air initiatives in their tracks. The current administration is no favorite of environmental groups, but these groups sided with the administration in a court case brought by the utility companies. On Friday an appeals court threw out the EPA's Clean Air Interstate Rule, established in 2005. The court ruled that the EPA had exceeded its authority when it established that rule, which set new requirements for major pollutants. According to the article, even the utilities were appalled to see the rule completely gutted; their objections had been narrower. Here is a podcast with the reporter (MP3) giving some background on the ruling. The second major blow to clean-air efforts came later in the day on Friday. Quoting: "...the EPA chief rejected any obligation to regulate heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide under existing law, saying that to do so would involve an 'unprecedented expansion' of the agency's authority that would have 'a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy,' touching 'every household in the land.'... In effect, Mr. Johnson was simultaneously publishing the policy analysis of his scientific and legal experts and repudiating its conclusions."
If I get it right, the EPA is allowed to be given authority to do things as long as they have no real effect? Of course the EPA is going to have a profound effect on every sector of the economy. If you curtail CO2 emissions you are basically affecting every step of production delivery and consumption of most goods. That is, after all, the gravity of the situation.
WTF is the EPA for anyway?
OTOH this is looking like an episode of Yes Minister, with the approach of overdoing a popular idea to make sure it sinks.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
No, you'll get modded to hell because you're a troll, and your post is flamebait of the first degree, down to your counter-moderation comment and accusation of bias. You are a bad troll at that. You don't even have your claims right, different groups. The prediction of eating each other was from overpopulation, and that was never more than a fringe belief of a bunch of Malthusian believers and not based on any hard science. The cooling trend was because of two factors, undocumented particulate effects and miscallibrated satellites producing erroneous data. The phenomenon of global warming is derived from diverse data and is subjected to immense scrutiny. If anyone can definitively prove it is not happening they'd get a Nobel prize for it.
If you take that line of reasoning then pretty much anything can be justified under "general welfare" and why have a constitution with a limited set of powers anyway?
--- You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad- Neal (not Cowboy) Boortz
Technically you're not far from the truth - Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy allowed (among other things) all business owners to purchase a $100,000 hummer h2 and write it off completely.
That could, in a sense, be considered forcing people to drive them if it was the only affordable option.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
until a zero emission vehicle is created
It's called a bicycle...
Do you want the government to tell you when you can drive?
What temperature to set your house at?
How many kids you can have?
What you can do, see, eat, or be?
The average person will tell you that, NO...they don't want any of this. Of course, the same person will say they want OTHERS regulated. The government should come in and regulate companies, they should regulate cities! Regulate farmers, miners, whatever, as long as it doesn't mean THEY are effected.
If your AVERAGE person really gave a shit, they would ALREADY be limiting their impact. For example, I drive as little as I can, recycle, bike as much as I can, turn off my CFL bulbs when not in use, xeriscape, etc...ALL without the government having to tell me to. This is what we call FREE AGENCY. Freedom...liberty. The choice to drive a Prius or a Hummer.
Thomas Jefferson would punch most of you dead in your shit!
How come liberals don't believe in liberty? Why are they only pro-choice when it comes to abortion? Thomas Jefferson would punch most of you dead in your shit!
So Bush doesn't sign us up for Kyoto or other measures...and everyone shits their collective pants about how evil Bush and the USA are cause of it. Most of the countries that DO sign these things don't even have to do anything! How fucking easy is it to sign something that doesn't require you to do anything? Most of these countries sign stuff left and right, like pledging troops for the SFOR, or Darfor...like pledging money for Afghan reconstruction..and they never actually pitch in....
How fucking easy is it to sign up when you don't intend to actually do your part? And the US is the bad guy, cause we just don't sign up? Fuck that.
THL phish sticks
I'm not the one who's throwing my hands in the air and proclaiming that Bush is evil and we may as well wait for a better solution. But you insist on omitting my original thoughts in full to make me look bad? Nothing but simple and ineffective trolling. Otherwise you'd put your name to it.
A bike isn't a complete solution was what I said but I also mention in my circumstances. I never said that bikes are worthless because they don't fit into my circumstances but you tried to make it seem like that was my intent. Again, ineffective to anyone who follows the thread.
I'd gladly ride a bike if I could (i mentioned that too, why not quote that?). And I do from time to time but for exercise instead of real transport. So, yes, I'm a bike owner and rider. I can't realistically ride one to my place of employment though and that makes up a good 85-90% of my commutes.
Again, this is shit I shouldn't have to explain to people who can read my WHOLE post and put 2 and 2 together. But it seems that lots of Slashdotters are all too happy to be assholes instead of real people.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Anything from legitimate scientific or academic sources? Any journals? Any articles not devoted to serving a publisher's political slant on a biased website? Anything about anything whatsoever other than journalistic misinterpretations?
Yes, let's be very careful to avoid violation of the spirit of the american constitution. How about equal care to something far more important (the environment that every person on this plant shares with you free-landers, for better or worse).
-cut to 200 years into the future-
"buh-buh-buh-but we honoured the constitution... how could this have happened?" *continues to slow-bake*
Requiem for the American Dream
But, the max write-off used to be MUCH smaller at $25K. The point is that by upping the max to $100K, lots of doctors and lawyers went out and bought Hummers on the tax payers' dime.
If that's forcing people to buy a Hummer, I'd like to meet those people. They still had to have the $100,000 up front to purchase it...
Next time you're getting your prostate fingered, say "hi" to one of the beneficiaries. I imagine that there are a lot of upper-class professionals with $100K to drop on a car if they know it's free money come tax time. IANAAccountant, so please explain how this isn't a huge incentive/smart business move to buy what was once a lucrative luxury item that the merchant probably wanted already.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
As correct as you may be, it seems that the 10th is only invoked whenever the ruling party doesn't like something.
Although the idea of states' rights is very much open to debate, the wording of the law should be amended to reflect the status quo that's been present ever since the end of the Civil War (remember folks, the constitution is not scripture, and was explicitly designed to be updated as needed).
For one thing, the 10th was drafted long before the sparsely-populated western states were annexed. Many of these states simply don't have the population to support all these agencies, and it would be fairly inefficient to duplicate the efforts of an agency such as the EPA or FDA 50 times over.
As long as the federal agencies are focusing on the issues that affect the majority of the states, I honestly see no problem. States certainly should be able to run their own agencies to tackle their own problems (that's the point after all), though it does make a lot of sense to have a federally-run agency to focus on the big-picture issues.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Erm ... did you actually look at those values ? Or even plug them into Excel/Matlab/Octave/whatever and trend them (with a larger running average than 12 months) ? If not, then I suggest you do that.
Global warming deniers generally are neither good at science nor at statistics.
Uh, did you look at the numbers? I mean, seriously. The numbers are not absolute temperature averages, they are a number that already statistically indicates above or below normal. It already factors in seasonality and all of that other stuff.
So, if you have got a negative number, it means the region in the column shown did in fact get colder. Secondly, there is a comparison set of columns with a twelve month moving average. Right now, the twelve month moving average is .089 degrees above normal.. however, the trend of that is downwards and has been since August 2007.
The basic theory against AGW is that the sun controls climate in a way that is linked to sunspots but is not understood -yet-. So, it's pretty simple to test. If there is a continued period of low sunspot activity by the sun, then the planet will cool off. If the planet heats up, then, hey, sunspot dudes are wrong and people on the coasts need to learn to swim;.
But... since there's been no or few sunspots for the last couple of months, and the earth is cooling down, AND, the La Nina that was previously cited for the unseasonable cooling is gone, well, I'm betting on the Little Ice Age.
This is my sig.
My neighbor across the street owns a small business. He has bought 3 hummers, which he rides around for a while with a removable sticker on the doors advertising his business, and then sells. He claims that he is making a profit (I cannot verify this) because he is very carefully following the law and taking advantage of some sort of calendar year/fiscal year mismatch.
He is very happy he voted for Cheney both times. He says the Bush Miracle Economy has been very profitable for him, his business shows a loss on paper every year and he's rolling in cash.
PS: He has six illegals cutting his huge lawn every week for $25.00 (total, not per Mexican) each time. He's against immigration reform because he thinks it would drive up the price...
A bike isn't a complete solution was what I said but I also mention in my circumstances. I never said that bikes are worthless because they don't fit into my circumstances but you tried to make it seem like that was my intent. Again, ineffective to anyone who follows the thread.
I apologise in advance if I missed where you gave the reasons why you cannot bike to work. However...
Why is it not a feasible solution? Is it because you live far away from your work place? Could you move closer? Is it because you have 5 kids, and can't afford a home that can house you, your wife, and kids on your salary?
Maybe having 5 kids was your mistake, and I'd go as far as arguing why do I have to, effectively, pay for the fact that you had too many kids and are using fuels merely because of that.
I'm obviously making a lot of leaps here, and I don't mean to be offensive. But why, then? Why can't you move closer to work?
I couldn't either, at a job I had a few years ago. But then I moved to another city, that has a city-layout that allows for my to be able to bike to work.
People say that you should vote with your dollars. You should also vote with your lifestyle.