gary350

I don't think there's a big debate that global warming is natural. I think the debate is how much are humans exacerbating it. What he said. I would just add drastically exacerbating it.

I got it. What's really not funny is that I could never have imagined an administration coming along that would make James Watt and Reagan look like Sierra Clubbers by comparison. The arrogance of these people is beyond belief, and nobody in the GOP seems to care the slightest. One of my favorite things is how when a scientist publishes a report about the greatly elevated risks of mercury to children, it disappears from the EPA website after a few days. But when the administration wants to change regulations to allow drastically more pollution, they propose it - enter it into the Federal Register - using language directly written by lawfirms representing the polluting industries! They don't even try to hide it!

>Gosh, I thought this message was about saving children, and instead you turn it into yet another Bush-bashing diatribe. Getting rid of Bush IS saving children. His administration's craven environmental policies are causing more birth defects than the March Of Dimes can possibly keep up with, all for the gain of the wealthy polluters. >Moveon.org is an organization of liberal shills. What does moveon.org have to do with this? All the articles I posted are from the Washington Post. Moveon.org has a simple way to forward comments to both the EPA and applicable representatives. Don't change the subject or attack sources that weren't even used. >Here's some more information, from the Washington Post, which the liberal moveon.org doesn't bother to tell you, in their zeal to demonize Bush: None of my articles was from moveon.org - In fact, I posted the SAME article you quoted from, ONLY I DIDN"T SELECTIVELY TAKE PIECES OF IT OUT OF CONTEXT TO MAKE POINTS, LIKE YOU DID. Another truly pathetic technique, along with plagiarism and outright lying. (Though I'm sure Rush would be VERY proud of you!) At the end of this post, let's pretend I use the same technique, from the SAME ARTICLE. Actually, I don't even need to stoop that low - the article speaks for itself, WHOLE. Read the whole thing. >Pardon me for letting facts get in the way of a good 'ol Bush- bashing. The facts about this administration's environmental policies speak for themselves. "Bush-bashing" in this case is simply reporting the facts. I welcome any attempts by you or anyone else to show me how this admin has not been an overwhelming disaster for the environment, and therefore for health concerns like birth defects. ================================= For nearly 21 months, a government task force steadily moved toward recommending rules that within three years would force every coal-fired power plant in the country to reduce emissions of mercury, which can cause neurological and developmental damage to humans. The Environmental Protection Agency-sponsored working group had a well-regarded mix of utility industry representatives, state air quality officials and environmentalists. Without settling on specific emission reductions, the panel agreed that all 1,100 of the nation's coal- and oil-fired power plants must use the "maximum achievable control technology" (MACT) to reduce mercury and other hazardous pollutants. But in April, the EPA abruptly dismantled the panel. John A. Paul, its co-chairman, said members were given no clue why their work was halted -- that is, until late last month, when the Bush administration revealed it was taking an entirely different approach, using a more flexible portion of the Clean Air Act. The new approach would still cost the industry billions of dollars to meet long-term goals. But it was far cheaper and less onerous than the MACT approach that most experts had assumed the EPA was developing to meet a court-imposed deadline of Dec. 15. The administration's alternative plan would technically downgrade the danger of mercury pollution; grant utility companies 10 more years to develop and install new anti-pollution equipment; and launch a cap-and-trade system that would allow utilities to buy emissions "credits" from lesser-polluting companies to meet an overall industry target, or cap, without having to install new scrubbers or anti-pollution equipment on every plant. The proposed rule mirrored President Bush's "Clear Skies" legislation, which was stalled in Congress, and would regulate mercury pollution along with two less toxic air pollutants, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. Mike Leavitt, the new EPA administrator, said the approach would provide "the largest air pollution reductions of any kind not specifically mandated by the Congress." But some task force members were shocked and angered. "It is as though the working group never existed," said Paul, supervisor of Ohio's Regional Air Pollution Control Agency. "Just when we think we have a process in action to control mercury from every power plant, they walk away from it." "It was a huge decision that demonstrated that [the EPA's] desire wasn't to regulate mercury in the way that Congress and a federal advisory committee and other stakeholders had anticipated," added panel member S. William Becker, executive director of a bipartisan association of state air quality officials. EPA and White House officials say their approach is actually "greener" than the one prescribed by Congress and considered by the working group. In the long run, they say, it will encourage development of mercury-removal technologies beyond existing techniques envisioned under MACT; offer utilities economic incentives to continuously reduce mercury emissions; and cover emissions from plants to be built, although new facilities are likely to use clean-burning natural gas, not coal. But critics accuse the White House and its allies in the utility industry of subverting a process involving one of the most toxic chemicals known, which once airborne can pollute rivers, lakes and oceans and penetrate the food chain. John Stanton of the National Environmental Trust, a member of the working group, said the administration's decision marks "really a fundamental shift in the recognition of the threat posed by mercury to the very most susceptible," including the fetuses of pregnant women who eat mercury-tainted fish. Stanton and other environmentalists charge that by shifting the regulations from the rigorous Section 112 of the Clean Air Act, crafted by Congress to deal with the most hazardous pollutants, to the more permissive Section 111, the administration will excuse the utility industry from controlling more than 60 other toxins associated with the burning of coal and allow power plants to continue polluting for another decade. "This is a case of politics polluting science," Stanton said. Some critics blamed White House political adviser Karl Rove, Office of Management and Budget regulatory experts or Vice President Cheney's office for dictating the new policy. In fact, the regulatory turnabout was engineered by Jeffrey R. Holmstead, the EPA's senior air quality official and a former industry lawyer, who is little known outside a circle of government regulators and utility industry executives. Holmstead had been a scholar with a libertarian group that advocated market solutions to environmental problems and a partner at the Washington law firm Latham & Watkins, which has represented electric power companies and other industries before Congress. He was associate counsel to President George H.W. Bush, with primary focus on environmental issues. Neither Leavitt nor Christine Todd Whitman, when she was EPA administrator, played a significant role in developing the mercury rule backed by Holmstead, although Leavitt became a strong advocate of the overall cap-and-trade approach during last-minute high-level meetings, said a Leavitt aide. "I was the one who started talking about [the approach] about a year ago," Holmstead confirmed in a recent interview. "I can assure you that no one on the industry side ever spoke about it." Holmstead said he first considered using Section 111 to regulate mercury, instead of the more restrictive Section 112, shortly after he joined the EPA, as part of deliberations over the administration's "Clear Skies" legislation. The proposed legislation uses market mechanisms to encourage development of new technology to meet mandatory industry-wide emissions caps. "It appeared we could get much greater pollution reduction from the power sector if we could do cap-and-trade for all three pollutants," Holmstead said. Under the administration's approach, utilities would have until 2018 to cut those emissions by 70 percent. By comparison, the EPA working group considered various approaches that would cut mercury pollution by 35 percent to 93 percent within three to four years. Rove said in an interview that although he attended several interagency meetings on mercury, "I was not a principal mover" in the decision-making. A senior White House adviser said: "If you had to pick one person, it was Jeff Holmstead in EPA's air office who played the key role in development of the cap-and-trade approach to regulation of mercury emissions." The Clinton administration considered a similar approach in 2000 but abandoned it after EPA officials found it was not legally supportable, said then-EPA director Carol Browner. "The career people at OMB basically proposed what industry wanted," Browner said. But agency lawyers said the approach "had some legal vulnerabilities." Over the summer, some EPA staffers cautioned Holmstead that treating mercury as a lesser pollutant and allowing for trading might not hold up in court, an EPA official said. "Sure, there's concerns about legal problems with this approach, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try it or that it doesn't have value," said Philip S. Angell, an adviser to Leavitt. Ann Berwick, associate director of the Clean Energy Group, an association of utilities advocating more environmentally sound policies, said her members are concerned that the administration plan is "a little dicey from a legal standpoint" and may not offer much regulatory certainty. As a legal hedge, the administration last month simultaneously proposed a second mercury regulation that would provide a 29 percent reduction in emissions and require all plants to install pollution controls. The EPA had to offer that proposal to comply with a legal requirement, and Leavitt and other officials made it clear it was not their first choice. In December 2000, the EPA concluded that mercury emissions from power plants were a hazardous pollutant that should be controlled under Section 112, which mandated swift adoption of the "maximum available technology." The EPA agreed to propose the MACT rule by Dec. 15, 2003, and finalize the rule a year later to settle a court case. The EPA created the Utility MACT Working Group in August 2002, around the time Holmstead joined the agency. The group included six representatives of state and local air quality agencies, eight environmentalists and 15 industry representatives. Although it was clear from the start that it would be impossible to develop a consensus view among the competing interests, Paul and other members said there was general agreement that there would have to be some type of a MACT standard, affecting every U.S. plant, to comply with the law. Interviews with leading industry lawyers and representatives indicated that although utility executives backed a flexible cap-and-trade system for mercury, most assumed the EPA would eventually adopt some type of MACT standard. Industry officials offered their views during at least five White House meetings between May 21 and Nov. 4. "People in the industry never expected EPA to go in that direction of a mercury trading program," said an industry lawyer. "It's something they liked, but [executives] thought the MACT standard was on the table, and they were resigned to that." Ohio-based Cinergy and the Clean Energy Group went so far as to ask the EPA for computer analyses to help assess the economic impact of the task force's MACT proposals. On April 1, Sally Shaver, an official of the EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards in North Carolina, told Paul and others that a decision on the computer runs had been indefinitely postponed. That was the last time Paul heard from the EPA.

White House, EPA Move To Ease Mercury Rules The Bush administration is working to undo regulations that would force power plants to sharply reduce mercury emissions and other toxic pollutants, according to a government document and interviews with officials. To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29807-2003Dec2.html?referrer=emailarticle EPA Led Mercury Policy Shift For nearly 21 months, a government task force steadily moved toward recommending rules that within three years would force every coal-fired power plant in the country to reduce emissions of mercury, which can cause neurological and developmental damage to humans. To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39770-2003Dec29.html?referrer=emailarticle Proposed Mercury Rules Bear Industry Mark The Bush administration proposed new rules yesterday regulating power plants' mercury pollution, and some of the language is similar to recommendations from two memos sent to federal officials by a law firm representing the utility industry. To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64630-2004Jan30.html?referrer=emailarticle Mercury Threat To Fetus Raised A new government analysis nearly doubled the estimate of the number of newborn children at risk for health problems because of unsafe mercury levels in their blood. Environmental Protection Agency scientists said yesterday that new research had shown that 630,000 U.S. newborns had unsafe levels of mercury in their blood in 1999-2000. To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17241-2004Feb5.html?referrer=emailarticle

The obvious answer is March Of Dimes - great organization, very worthy of support. Send them some cash. Or you could even find some guy, somewhere, to sponsor in a walk-a-thon (hint: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=913544 ) Here's another way to help: Along with lead, mercury is a major concern for birth defects. "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 4.9 million women of childbearing age in the U.S. - that's 8 percent - have unsafe levels of mercury in their blood. The people hit hardest will be new-born infants - every year over 630,000 infants are born with levels of mercury in their blood so high they can cause brain damage." "The biggest source of mercury pollution in the U.S. is emissions from power plants." Even so, "The Bush administration is working to UNDO regulations that would force power plants to sharply reduce mercury emissions and other toxic pollutants" This is really no surprise - the wholesale assault on environmental regulations by this administration (on behalf of rich polluters that contribute heavily to the GOP) has been unrelenting, completely shameless, and comes at the cost of our health. I'll post some articles and links later. It is doubtful that the EPA (under the control of this administration) will care, but for the next few weeks, public comments are being accepted by the EPA on the plan to defer mercury controls. At the below link, you can simultaneously send a comment to the EPA and your representatives in congress: http://www.moveon.org/mercury/ Or, you can just send a note directly to the EPA: Environmental Protection Agency Ariel Rios Building 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20460 (202) 272-0167 You can submit comments directly online at http://www.epa.gov/edocket Find the "Submit Comments" link - this issue is docket OAR-2002-0056

Are morons considered minorities? If so, GW Bush has already got this thing locked up.

Careful Dude! I've read a lot on these forums about the dangers of downsizing too fast!

Just like the cat that ate cheese and then blew into the mousehole. . .

This should be about to start. . .

Moderator or not, I'm calling bullshit on making a post with a title like that and then not delivering on it. It's just not right and I'm going to fix it. . .

Maybe the issue was not strictly the contest, but that they showed the poor judgement to brag about it in front of the judge. Pretty stupid.

That's like saying "I need a parachute for skydiving - which one is best?" More information is needed. . .

Now that is funny!

Uh-oh - seems like somebody's getting a just a wee bit testy. Too many insults to our fine president, maybe? It's really OK, FallRate - just because some of us hate him, it doesn't take anything away from your love for him.

>You have no idea how some of these weapons are VERY important to our forces...Have you ever SEEN a Claymore? Look Ron, just because we're liberal or progressive or whatever, doesn't mean we don't know our weapons, and I resent any implication otherwise! I happen to know all about Claymores - they are large Scottish broadswords, with the blade modified to explode out in one direction. The blade is marked "This Side Toward Enemy (The English)"

Hell (literally), how 'bout our "sister planet", Venus? The forecast is the same every day: Overcast (clouds of 96% sulfuric acid), high of 850 degrees Fahrenheit, low about the same, pressure about 91,000 millibars (or 1320 psi - 90 TIMES that on Earth). Yikes!

>Right? I have no idea right now. I've been out playing catch with my boy in the rain, then sitting in the hot tub reading Discover and drinking tequila from a brandy glass. About to play chess with him - will spot him a queen (and the tequila). Just want a good place for me to fade away and for the kids to live and bring up kids of their own maybe. Deficits don't help.

OMG - Causality loop! I'm freaking out! Hey lawrocket - how is your wife? Big? Beautiful? Glowing???

It didn't happen if there's no video. Well. . . ???

Fiction: Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov Reading again (again, again. . . ) Favorite fiction ever, hands-down. Non-Fiction: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond

That's Sanitation Technician to you, buddy. Actually good points about it being sooooo much easier to get your education early on, before mortgages, kids, etc. . .

Yeah, that's it - it wasn't TRILLION dollar tax cuts mostly for the wealthy, or 200 BILLION spent (and counting) and a war based on lies, or the EXPLOSION of big-government spending. Please. Don't you think these things had something to do with the surpluses evaporating overnight and being replaced with monumental deficits???

Yeah, Gary can be the pivot-man OK - that's funny. I'll be sure not to protest too much. . .

Glad you got my humor. You bet I'll look you up if/when I get to Northern Europe. Do the same if you come to the PNW (Pacific NorthWest - Oregon). I never became a hard-core BASEer and quit entirely some time ago, but still know where some stuff is. . .

QuoteThis one was taken last week by the Pathfinder on MARS. [/Reply] Hey Dick - Crash here from Creswell. How the hell are ya? If I'm back jumping, we'll have to get together at the DZ this spring or summer and try to scare each other. Awsome pic - thanks for posting. Did you also see the blue toned sunset video? http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20040226a.html