Re: EPA to lable CO2 health hazard.

[Guest guest]

I'm for cleaning up the environment. One needs to keep in mind all the money

that was NOT spent to avoid dumping pollution into the water and belching it

into the sky in the first place. Some rudimentary technology existed to prevent

pollution from being that bad, but loose regulations allowed companies to do

what they wanted.

Now I do happen to believe that global warming and climate change are related to

pollution.

However, in watching a series of shows on cataclysmic events over the course of

the past 10,000 years or so, what occurs to me is that just about twice a

century we can expect a volcano to belch enough rock, dust, carbon, sulfur into

the atmosphere to void the attempts we are making to clean the air up. Krakatoa

could go again within 50 years as could Vesuvius, Etna, or a whole bunch of

others.

Those relements and compounds that get shot into the atmosphere come down as

acid rain, and they blot out the sun, causing famine and drought in places where

a lot of sun is needed to grow crops, and...COOLING!!!

Scientists have been able to determine that when volcanoes erupt, there is a lot

of ash that falls all over the earth, and that is usually covered by thicker

layers of ice than usual, indicating that in the years following an eruption,

more snow happens. If more snow is happening, it is thought that there is more

cooling going on in addition to more precipitation, and as we all know,

precipitation cleans the toxins and particulate matter out of the atmosphere.

The question we have to ask ourselves is...how healthy do we all want to be in

the meantime? What is the health costs of having a dirty atmosphere vs. the

costs of cleaning up that atmosphere?

If it seems that the cost benefit analysis works in favor of a clean-up, then I

would opt for that. But I cannot really see how any study could accurately

determine a real number either.

Administrator

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/06/epa-set-delare-carbon-dioxide-public-\

danger/

Updated December 06, 2009

EPA Set to Declare Carbon Dioxide a Public Danger

WSJ

The announcement would give Obama and his climate envoy negotiating leverage at

a global climate summit starting next week in Copenhagen, Denmark.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will early next week,

possibly as soon as Monday, officially declare carbon dioxide a public danger, a

trigger that could mean regulation for emitters across the economy, according to

several people close to the matter.

Such an " endangerment " decision is necessary for the EPA to move ahead early

next year with new emission standards for cars. EPA Administrator

has said it could also mean large emitters such as power stations, cement kilns,

crude-oil refineries and chemical plants would have to curb their greenhouse gas

output.

The announcement would also give President Barack Obama and his climate envoy

negotiating leverage at a global climate summit starting next week in

Copenhagen, Denmark and increase pressure on Congress to pass a climate bill

that would modify the price of polluting.

While environmentalists celebrate EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases,

it has caused many large emitters to cringe at the potential costs of

compliance.

According to a preliminary endangerment finding published in April, EPA

scientists fear that man-made carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are

contributing to a warming of the global climate. Senior EPA officials said in

November the agency would likely make a final decision in December around the

time of the summit.

[Guest guest]

You make some good points . There are no easy answers.

Administrator

We have been cleaning up the environment a lot. As a child, I remember seeing a

brown band around the horizon, one that would reach a quarter or more of the way

up the sky. That was the pollution in the sky. Its gone now, at least around

here. Not a trace of it. The water is cleaner, too.

The thing is that we are at a point now where the cost-benefit curve of cleaning

up that bit more is very steep. By that I mean if we spend $1 to clean one more

unit of pollution, we might get 80 cents of benefit. If we spend $2, we might

get $1.10 in return, so the result gets less and less. I think what we should do

is put bounties out for new technology that rather than being a penalty or a tax

will make a profit for the company or whoever owns the clean up device. A purely

private venture, aside from the bounty, that would not reduce or harm the power

industry but make it more profitable. I'm absolutely certain technologies would

be developed in short order, a few years at most, under this system.

Cap and Trade has never worked anywhere it has been applied. Parts of Europe and

other places have tried it and all that happens is energy gets more expensive

and a few get obscenely rich by playing the market. Many carbon shares won't be

needed by companies and they will be sold and traded just like other

commodities. What happens is they are traded around, the prices keep going up,

so they became more expensive for other companies that might come to need them.

What we are seeing is companies like GE already predicting many billions of

profit from trading their credits and individuals like Al Gore who are likewise

predicted to got from being a mere $100 millionaire to a billionaire in short

order. Both classes are already positioning themselves to loot the system and

they will.

Its not going to work and we are all going to bear the cost of it.

Don't forget also that England is close to passing an " individual carbon

allowance " card to all of its citizens. Essentially this will be a carbon credit

for each person per year and if you exceed it you pay fines and maybe jail time.

The program will allow home inspections, monitoring power usage and other

things. I can see that happening here as well and I don't think the Democrats in

particular will have any compunction against passing such a monstrosity.