Huge study about safety can be misinterpreted by SUV drivers

Well you don't even have this right. Canada has a much higher per capita energy
consumption than the US.

Ed

 

Right. Peer reviewed grants are adjudicated and funded by established
scientists in a field, not on the basis of scientific validity or
track record, but on the basis of how much hysteria is in the grant
proposal. And certainly, no researcher can ever hope to get any money
from large energy corporations by delivering research that promotes
the corporations' messages; they just don't have the funding that the
NSF does, especially after the latest rounds of conservative cuts in
federal research spending and corporate regulation. Ask yourself, how
come the folks who carry out the vast volumes of research that go into
something like the huge IPCC report toil in anonymity and obscurity,
but every time some guy's estimate of global warming comes out to be
..9 degrees per decade instead of 1 degree per decade, every newspaper
runs a headline story 'New Study Casts Doubt on Global Warming'
mentioning him by name.

 

1) Cow or human, burps contain no CO2.

2) Fermentation is, by definition, carried out without oxygen and
therefore produces no CO2.

Got any more 'facts' you'd like to share?

 

The question is, why the hell would they be burning oil in China to
power American air conditioners? Or do you think they will be
confiscating our air conditioners and moving them to China as well?
Because I will definitely state that I would be against such a move.

 

Well, if that's your worry, you can't rely on blocking Kyoto. Why
isn't there more of it now? There are currently less stringent
controls on emissions in the third world than the US. What's stopping
the average Chinese from consuming the same energy as the US? Why
don't they just drop over to the local Walmart and buy an air
conditioner on their Visa, and let it keep their big old house at 68
degrees all summer? Why aren't they driving big huge heavy truck-based
vehicles on their commutes to their jobs and to the supermarkets? Are
they just waiting for Kyoto, for some reason?

Why are manufacturers not waiting for Kyoto to move their production
to the third world? Is it because they aren't as concerned about the
costs of CO2 reduction as they are about every other cost that goes
into manufacture?

 

The average person in china is limited by his income, which is what
you are getting at. After all, it's the politics first, the environment
second. And that's the problem, the environment is being used as an
excuse for a political and social agenda. If it were about the environment
there would be a call for global standards, and until then keeping as
much production in the USA, europe, and japan as possible because that
is where the environmental protections exist. But it's not about the
environment.

Because of all the regulation that doesn't exist in the 'third world'
that exists in the developed world now. The kyoto treaty would only
accelerate the move and encourage more businesses to relocate as it
only heaps on more regulation and limitation in the developed world.
Making the regulation disparity greater with things like the kyoto
treaty can have but one effect, to further encourage the relocation
of the means of production.

 

When will the average US citizen drive a lincoln navigator? Never.

Do you care about the environment more than your politics, z?
Obviously not given the arguements you are making. If you cared about
the environment first and foremost then what is occuring in China and
other places should offend you greatly. It's corporations going around
the hard fought for environmental protections in the west by relocating
their production to nations like China. But it doesn't offend you.
Instead, what offends you is that people in the USA use too much energy
per person.

And that's the root of it, the environment being used as an excuse for
a political and social agenda. If you feel people should have to live
never using more than X power per year, then argue for that in the open.
Argue for a world wide global limit. You'd have a crediable stance then.
But by arguing that some nations should be unfettered and others fettered
shows it's not about the environment at all, but about politics.

 

If you take the model that the 'evil corporation' will pollute in mass
whenever they aren't forced to be clean then if it were economically
feasiable to relocate electric generation, they would.

But let's deal with what is feasiable to relocate now. Manufacturing
of goods. Those plants consume electricity to make those goods. Where
would you prefer this electricity to be generated? In the USA with
lots of environmental protection or China with next to none? If the
manufacturing plant stays in the USA, it's electricity will be generated
in the USA. If it goes to china, it's electricity will be generated in
China. It's a ripple effect of pollution.

So, what's more important? The environment or the politics?

 

They are going to move production of CO2 to China? All those
inefficient old coal-fired power plants are going to China? And do
what, export the electricity to the US, or sell the average Chinese
more electricity? How's that going to work? After all, the EPA has
been on the back of coal-fired powerplants and coal mining for decades
as the two biggest sources of pollution in the US currently, and the
regulations somehow haven't managed to move them to China yet, why are
CO2 regulations going to cause them to move?

Have you noticed how much manufacturing has moved to the thrid world
from the US already? Exactly what energy intensive manufacturers are
going to pack up and leave that have not already? Are the car
companies who are now starting to manufacture more in the US, despite
more environmental and labor regulation than the third world, going to
change their minds and close down again because of CO2 regulations?

And isn't 'generating less CO2 per unit of energy produced' just a
definition of the phrase 'energy efficiency'? Isn't every energy
company annual corporate report full of glowing pages about how they
are keeping their costs down by increasing energy efficiency? Doesn't
that actually lower the cost of power, in the long run? Isn't this
just a push to modernize or mothball old inefficient plants, sooner
than would happen anyway due to fuel costs? If they have to do so, why
would they want to build new plants in the third world where there
isn't any excess demand for more power, rather that refurbish old
plants or build new ones here in the US, where the demand is?

 

Where do you think widgets are made? What exactly is currently made in
the US that is going to all of a sudden be made overseas, but only if
Kyoto gets implemented? Cars and trucks? Too late there, buddy.
Houses, buildings, highways, etc.? Seems unlikely. Clothes and
fabrics? Long long gone. Toys? Checked the labels on the stock at
Walmart lately? Or are they just going to shut down the powerplants in
the US, move them to China, and store the electricity in batteries so
we can run our home appliances on them?

 

But there are already all those environmental and labor regulations in
the US, and industry is moving manufacturing, and now serive, overseas
already. Do you think that this will be speeded up by regulations
reducing CO2, making 'energy production more streamlined', which is
just another way to say making energy production more efficient?
Doesn't making energy production more efficient end up lowering the
cost of energy?

 

What is better? An old inefficient regulated to be as clean as feasiable
coal power plant in the USA feeding a factory with electricity or a
quick-and-dirty-old-tech-soviet-style coal plant in china feeding a
factory? Which is better for the environment?

And why do we have old coal plants in the USA? Because any new plants
are opposed on environmental grounds. And new and better means of
generation are opposed on environmental grounds. So what we get
is the status quo. The status quo remains because change is not
possible.

Your choice of arguement is patently stupid. You take something that
isn't feasiable to relocate because of the infastructure required.
However what is economically feasiable to relocate, factories that
make products that can be shipped back to the USA, are being relocated.

If it became economically feasiable to relocate electric power
generation, it would get relocated to places with lower levels
of regulation.

What companies will stay at all if more regulation is heaped on the US
further tipping the market scales in favor of china?

Another invalid arguement. The foreign automakers building plants in
the USA are from Germany and Japan. Other nations with similiar labor
and environmental regulations. The USA competes on an near equal footing
with those nations with regards to factory locations. The nature of
the product demands it be built in a developed nation, and since the
USA is the largest market for that product, it makes economic sense
to locate the plant here. But, if china can ever be trusted to build
cars and the savings were greater than the shipping costs and taxes
well expect that production to move there too.

 

Costs money to heat all those homes in our winters.
--
Brandon Sommerville
remove ".gov" to e-mail

Definition of "Lottery":
Millions of stupid people contributing
to make one stupid person look smart.

 

"Fermentation is, by definition, carried out without oxygen and therefore
produces no CO2."
Go back to grade school:
"Alcohol fermentation is done by yeast and some kinds of bacteria. The
"waste" products of this process are ethanol and carbon dioxide (CO2)"
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio104/cellresp.htm

 

"When will the average US citizen drive a lincoln navigator? Never."
The US citizens will DRIVE them, the Chinese will LIVE in them.

 

Yeah, that's a requirement for a grant, like your predecessors here
say. You have to say 'and if funded, this project will destroy
capitalism and further the crypto-communist agenda, destroying the
middle class life style of myself and others like me and my family'.
Bravo, you've figured it out. Down with science!!![/QUOTE]

This is the strategy of the left. When they find them on the wrong side of
morality, they redefine morality. Now it's science. If you disagree with
the "science" of global warming (and the global disaster it leads to) then
you reject science. Likewise, morality is no longer fidelity, honesty,
personal responsibility. It's now support for the policies of the left,
like gay marriage and adopting the Kyoto protocol.

The groups standing behind extreme environmentalists are Socialists and
Communists. They are idealogical siblings to protect people from "evil
corporations".

 

A PERFECT illustration of my point. Direct solar power will never be
competitive, because if you average out the net collectable solar energy
flux per unit area and divide that by the market demand for power, you
find that VAST areas would have to be covered in solar collectors in
order get a substatial percentage. OTOH, wind power, hydroelectric
power, and tidal power (which actually are ways to harness solar energy
collected naturally by the atmosphere and ocean) is viable. So goverment
pressure to "develop" direct solar is misguided, misplaced, and a wasted
effort.

Physics, not politics, MUST drive progress. Period.