Supreme Court Rebukes Bush Administration in Global Warming Case
This from the NY Times
The Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a
fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke
to Bush administration policy on global warming.
In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.
Greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the landmark environmental law, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion.
The court's four conservative justices -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- dissented.
The court had three questions before it.
--Do states have the right to sue the EPA to challenge its decision?
--Does the Clean Air Act give EPA the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases?
--Does EPA have the discretion not to regulate those emissions?
The court said yes to the first two questions. On the third, it ordered EPA to re-evaluate its contention it has the discretion not to regulate tailpipe emissions.
Are we getting somewhere with green house emissions?
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FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
Submitted on April 10th, 2007 by pacomThis morning I watched Newt Gingrich and John Kerry
debate possible governmental reaction to global warming.
The possible disasters each was trying to avoid just kept
on multiplying.
I would recommend this approach: stop talking about this
umbrella of "global warming" and break it out into a prioritized
list of problems to be solved.
Seems like one of the first problems to be solved is how to keep
the oceans from rising.
I would think that this single project should be done as quickly
as possible , to be like an insurance policy:
create the ability to divert a variable amount of water , up to
three-fourths the flow, of the River Nile at the third cataract.
That water could be turned into the desert, and it would not be going
into any ocean.
tannhauser PACOM , tanaiste
That sounds like a bandaid rather than a cure.
Submitted on April 10th, 2007 by Donald GrbacGlobal warming is a serious problem that must be addressed at its source - mankind's manufacturing of tremendous volumes of carbon dioxide. This is almost like trying to change the orbit of Earth around the Sun. The sooner we start to affect the direction, the better results we will see down the road. We must address the root problem as soon as possible to hope for a lasting result that is sustainable.
DON
Only democracy will save us!
donald : what do you propose as project number two ?
Submitted on April 11th, 2007 by pacomDonald:
Maybe from the "urgency" angle , you see some project
which should be done before the River Nile project.
SO : what project would that be ?
What do you have in mind ?
tannhauser PACOM , tanaiste
Cut carbon emmissions fast!
Submitted on April 11th, 2007 by Donald GrbacWe need to reduce our production of carbon emmissions as fast as possible. Using the economy as an excuse not to do this is invalid. Clean industries will grow and produce jobs as fast or faster than any loses from polluting companies. These polluting industries have way too much political power, but we can change that.
My second most urgent project would be to plant and cultivate new forests to regrow the lost rain forests, and to extend the ones we still barely have existing. We have lost well over 90% of the world's rain forests over the last 50 years. These forests are nature's air conditioner. They are critical.
All this takes a lot of time. That's why we must start, and start in a big determined way - soon!
DON
Only democracy will save us!
water vapor: 80 % carbon dioxide : 20 %
Submitted on April 12th, 2007 by pacomThe scientific data supporting the global warming alarm
is clear that water vapor is much more the cause of warming
than carbon dioxide. Obviously , we have brought way too much
water to the surface . The attack on carbon seems to be
a case of the rhetorical device of strain aat a gnat , and swallow
a camel. The various sites have about 90 percent of their data
on carbon , while also stating that 80 percent of the greenhouse
effect is caused by waater vaapor.
I remember back in the decade of the 1950s when Oklahoma
was lobbying the US to build the big lake in Oklahoma:
the biggest advantage was to cause this change in the climate
of Oklahoma, so that the farmers would get more rain.
tannhauser PACOM , tanaiste
MORE RESEARCH INTO WATER VAPOR
Submitted on April 12th, 2007 by pacomThis is beginning to look like another case of disinformation.
The best research that I can find on the internet about water
vapor release comes from academics in agriculture.
They are jumping through hoops to sort out the evaporation from
stems and leaves versus from the soil , and experimenting
with various irrigation cycles , canopy , and soil cover to
reduce the loss of water from the soil.
One obvious conclusion from the work done is that global
warming would be REDUCED if you cut down all the rain forests !
That's because there is very little evaporation from the soil
once it has dried out to a depth of only one half inch.
Also found in their data is the fact that some crops require
more water than others.
Why is no one talking about these propositions in the global
warming context ?
I got all kinds of data from this Yahoo search: surfaces "evaporation rate". Here is a term which one author ( Klocke ?)
used : "evapotranspiration" to mean the combined loss of
water from both plant and soil.
http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/pr_irrigate/00w/po5/klocke.pdf
(I really doubt that the above is typed in correctly !)
For our campaign: I suggest we pursue this global warming project: have instruments to detect big air masses of high humidity,
and cause a giant "dew drop" when that mass is above an area where the drop would do the least harm/ most good.
I am sure that you have seen evidence of such dew drops on the Weather Channel time-elapsed radar. They look like an explosion
of about 40 mile radius.
tannhauser PACOM , tanaiste
Whoa, and whoa again there, PACOM!
Submitted on April 12th, 2007 by Donald GrbacYou must be more careful what information / disinformation you are reading. You cannot simply google global warming and expect to find the answers. You must look at the reports from the established scientific community for validity. That water vapor idea is 180 degrees out of phase with reality!
Here are some legitmate sites to read and get educated:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)Woods Hole Research Center
And of course:
An Inconvenient Truth
Propaganda against global warming is strong from polluting industries - they have tons of it out there.
Don
Only democracy will save us!
IPCC SAYS WATER VAPOR GREATER FACTOR THAN CARBON DIOXIDE
Submitted on April 17th, 2007 by pacomDonald:
I did this Yahoo search , and got many references:
ipcc "water vapor"
for example:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/aviation/032.htm
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/268.htm
www.ipcc.ch/activity/cct6.pdf
"In addition water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas and
the single most important reason why the expected response
to radiative forcing is roughly double ... "
But just entering the Yahoo seach , and reading the summary
by each site listed is enough to convince the reasonable person
that ipcc thinks water vapor is more important than carbon dioxide
tannhauser PACOM , tanaiste
I reaalize this is a political forum, but . . . .
Submitted on April 17th, 2007 by pacomWhat I am talking about is the science.
Even in the political documents, it is conceeded thaat the warming
effect is more dependent upon water vaapor thaan carbon dioxide,
however the water vaapor is dismissed by saying no one can do anything
about that , whereas they can do something about carbon dioxide.
However that is just aa false assertion, and VERY politically
motivated !
For example, the altitude of the gasses also make for more warming.
Therefore a ton of water vaapor released by an airplaane or space laaunch has much more effect than thaat from crop irrigation.
Why would people be spending millions studying high aaltitude
water vaapor , if they weren't worried about something !
See comments by Dr Michael H. Stevens of NRL : " our
results indicaate that the water vapor released by laaunch
vehicles can end up in the arctic mesophere."
in http://www.redorbit.com
Here is a real note :
http://ams.com.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/42454.pdf
All about experiments to get the instruments callibrated to measure water vapor
tannhauser PACOM , tanaiste
FOX had their minions all over this one.
Submitted on April 2nd, 2007 by Juan FloresBut what does "reevaluate" mean to Bush?
Submitted on April 2nd, 2007 by jeffhaleySo the EPA's argument was that these suit-bringing states are just being jerks because they don't have the right to sue, the Clean Air Act totally doesn't apply to cars, and even if it does hypothetically in some bizarro hippie world, the EPA as a federal agency has the legal authority to decide not to enforce federal laws like the CAA anyway.
And the SCotUS majority ruled that the EPA can in fact be sued by the states, that the CAA does apply to cars, and the EPA should re-think its decision not to enforce the law.
But unfortunately this is the Bush EPA, so at best they'll probably just use a magic 8 ball or ouija board to re-evaluate their policies, bearing in mind that Cheney has been known to shoot people in the face, so I'm thinking this weak-willed Congress needs to somehow step up and mandate that the EPA enforce the environmental laws. But of course that would be blocked by either Republican filibuster or Bush veto, with Motor City Democrats joining to save their special interests as well, so what can we do?
Maybe the environment should primarily be a state issue during Republican administrations, I don't know. This sounds like a job for the National Initiative to see if the American people want to pass laws that really protect the environment.
I did hear that when Bush 41 was President, little Georgie Junior climbed up on his lap one day and asked "Yo Poppa, what the EPA stand fer?" And Senior looked down at him and screamed "GAAA, your knee is crushing my Nixon, Boy! Go ask Quayle!" So obviously Dubya never found out...
GLOBAL MELTDOWN SOLUTION QUELLED..
Submitted on April 16th, 2007 by 13harleyI test drove a Prius and it broke down.
Submitted on April 16th, 2007 by Cubbie GirlI went out with a friend to
Submitted on April 11th, 2008 by envmikeI went out with a friend to the movies she had a Prius then had trouble starting it after the movie but I don't think it was wiring related I got in and stepped on the break and it started right up. I'm all for hybrids and saving energy, i've gone so far as to get double glazed windows to keep the heat in so i burn less oil. And as for SUV's the reason I hate them is because most people can't drive them in parking lots, if they hate paying for gas they could always trade in their SUV for something more environmentally friendly.