Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Dear Leader

More on Money and the Guard.

And then there's this:
“The general scientific consensus on climate change and hurricanes is this: Hurricanes won’t necessarily become more frequent, but they will become more intense. While ocean and atmospheric circulation is the engine of a hurricane, heat is the fuel. ‘In order to form, a hurricane must have ocean temperature of at least 80 degrees down to a depth of 164 feet,’ says Curry. ‘Sea surface temperatures all over the tropics are running 1.8 to 3.6 degrees above normal. This is due to global warming.’ Thus, when other factors line up to form a storm, a warmer ocean means it will be all the more powerful and destructive.”

Which is again that silly little thing called science countering the logic of oh, say easing pollution rules:

The Bush administration has drafted regulations that would ease pollution controls on older, dirtier power plants and could allow those that modernize to emit more pollution, rather than less.

The language could undercut dozens of pending state and federal lawsuits aimed at forcing coal-fired plants to cut back emissions of harmful pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, said lawyers who worked on the cases.
...
"We are committed to permanent significant emissions reductions from power plants because what matters is environmental results, and we get far better results under the Bush administration's Clean Air Interstate Rule, which cuts emissions by 70 percent," she said. That rule sets a long-term cap that would cut industry-wide emissions over the next decade and allow less-polluting plants to sell credits to dirtier facilities to reach the overall goal.

But John Walke, NRDC's clean-air director, said: "This radical proposal is a 180-degree flip-flop from what the administration has been arguing in court. Instead of protecting public health, now EPA wants to protect the polluters. The proposal would completely sabotage clean-air law enforcement, and it would be open season for power plants to pollute even more than they do now."

Phew... I was worried we we're just going to be handing our kids an enourmous debt! I am so relieved they won't be able to breathe too.

And to all of you so-called scientists sounding the alarm, I say this: Watch Your Back!!!