Global cooling

[mac]

NW--utter nonsense. The Rep's have fought regulation of particulates, which are one of the remaining significant causes of cancer--to curry favor with big coal--and have defunded, or tried to defund, lead control. They just got done blocking funding for Flint in the energy bill. Having forgotten more about pollution control than you will ever know, I could make that a long list. But just one contribution in the past ten years--or one peer reviewed science study on global warming--is all I ask.

[nw30]

The only legislation that the Republicans have fought, are the ones that put people out of work. You keep putting the economic health of families behind perceived environmental issues involving global warming. Typical liberals, trying to have it both ways, for the poor or struggling, but also in favor of environmental policies that put the poor or struggling at risk.

I'm not going to get into Flint, that is a story that had it's beginnings way far back, decades in the making, enough fault to go around in many directions. But glom onto it you will, so be it.

You know there is something called public relations, ever hear of it?
Do you and swc really think that the Rebup's would totally ignore their own PR, to be as adamant at opposing pollutions measures for some sort of misguided ideology as you guys claim? Really!?! That would be suicide.
If so, you guys must own stock in Alcoa Aluminum Hat Co.

[swchandler]

NW30, folks like you have such a shallow view of things. You mention seatbelts, but have you really thought about the evolutionary development of seatbelts, and all the other safety equipment for automobiles that has been developed over the last 50+ years? It's been big business, and it has created a multitude of higher tech jobs in the design, development, manufacturing and the service sectors. Consider the first mandated seatbelt design, to include headrests, in the 60s, and compare it with the safety equipment in today's cars.

You really need to get a clue, and stop listening to the folks whining and creating foolish doomsday stories that simply have no credibility over time. We could talk about many other areas where safety regulations have influenced practically everything we know today. Think back broadly, and you know I'm right.

It's not easy for the folks in power, but why should we listen to them? Time to think about creating jobs and looking beyond the status quo. Is America going to be on top in the future if we wimp out and don't push boundaries, particularly the ones we know have negative health and safety implications?

[mac]

Couldn't find one could you.

So uninformed.

[techno900]

Just a little more info. on Flint from Scientific American:

[nw30]

[swchandler]

You make statements like this.

"The only legislation that the Republicans have fought, are the ones that put people out of work. You keep putting the economic health of families behind perceived environmental issues involving global warming. Typical liberals, trying to have it both ways, for the poor or struggling, but also in favor of environmental policies that put the poor or struggling at risk."


Do you really buy into such empty talking points touting the Republicans as the good guys? Then you add a serving of BS about liberals going after the poor and struggling, to include those folks being callously put out of work, because of stricter pollution standards. What a pantload.

Regarding your attempt at being clever in a comeback by mentioning a movie called "An Inconvenient Truth", I have to admit that I've never seen the movie. Maybe you can fill me in why it's such a "piece of crap movie", and why the issue of global warming is a liberal hoax "putting the poor or struggling at risk". Maybe you and isobars can collaborate on the details.

[mac]

More fact free nonsense from NW about Republican support for environmental protection. Here's the scorecard of their votes: http://scorecard.lcv.org/

The Republicans led the charge to weaken every law in sight, accounting for overall scores of 45% for the Senate and 41% for the House. Here's the short version from the League:

[GURGLETROUSERS]

Got to laugh - Geological hat on.

Letter in paper today from irate person indignantly protesting at politicians free jollies at climate conferences. He quotes Maureen Raymus of Lamont/Doherty Earth Observation, Columbia University.

'Three million years ago in the Pliocene Era, world temps were 1 to 2 degrees centigrade warmer than today, and the sea level is estimated to have been 10 to 40 metres higher. If all the earths ice melted the rise would be in the region of 55 metres.
About 40 million years ago that probably did happen when CO2 atmospheric levels reached around 1,000ppm. (400+ppm today.) On the other hand,at the ice age, sea levels would likely have been lower by up to 100 metres than today.'

When the ice retreated, the land would temporarily have been flooded before bouncing back up, having been relieved of the weight of ice, leaving raised beaches at about the 60 foot level. (My addition.)

Wonder what our earth has been playing at? (These geologists just won't shut up.) Doesn't the earth realise that the science is now settled, and everything that happens is our fault!

[MalibuGuru]

Andrew Follett

Environmentalists truly believed and predicted that the planet was doomed during the first Earth Day in 1970, unless drastic actions were taken to save it. Humanity never quite got around to that drastic action, but environmentalists still recall the first Earth Day fondly and hold many of the predictions in high regard.
So this Earth Day, The Daily Caller News Foundation takes a look at predictions made by environmentalists around the original Earth Day in 1970 to see how they’ve held up.
Have any of these dire predictions come true? No, but that hasn’t stopped environmentalists from worrying. From predicting the end of civilization to classic worries about peak oil, here are seven green predictions that were just flat out wrong.

1: “Civilization Will End Within 15 or 30 Years.”
Harvard biologist Dr. George Wald warned shortly before the first Earth Day in 1970 that civilization would soon end “unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” Three years before his projection, Wald was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Wald was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race. He even flew to Moscow at one point to advise the leader of the Soviet Union on environmental policy.
Despite his assistance to a communist government, civilization still exists. The percentage of Americans who are concerned about environmental threats has fallen as civilization failed to end by environmental catastrophe.

2: “100-200 Million People Per Year Will Be Starving to Death During the Next Ten Years.”
Stanford professor Dr. Paul Ehrlich declared in April 1970 that mass starvation was imminent. His dire predictions failed to materialize as the number of people living in poverty has significantly declined and the amount of food per person has steadily increased, despite population growth. The world’s Gross Domestic Product per person has immeasurably increased despite increases in population.
Ehrlich is largely responsible for this view, having co-published “The Population Bomb” with The Sierra Club in 1968. The book made a number of claims including that millions of humans would starve to death in the 1970s and 1980s, mass famines would sweep England leading to the country’s demise, and that ecological destruction would devastate the planet causing the collapse of civilization.

3: “Population Will Inevitably and Completely Outstrip Whatever Small Increases in Food Supplies We Make.”
Paul Ehrlich also made the above claim in 1970, shortly before an agricultural revolution that caused the world’s food supply to rapidly increase.
Ehrlich has consistently failed to revise his predictions when confronted with the fact that they did not occur, stating in 2009 that “perhaps the most serious flaw in The Bomb was that it was much too optimistic about the future.”

4: “Demographers Agree Almost Unanimously … Thirty Years From Now, the Entire World … Will Be in Famine.”
Environmentalists in 1970 truly believed in a scientific consensus predicting global famine due to population growth in the developing world, especially in India.
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions,” Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University, said in a 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.”By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
India, where the famines were supposed to begin, recently became one of the world’s largest exporters of agricultural products and food supply per person in the country has drastically increased in recent years. In fact, the number of people in every country listed by Gunter has risen dramatically since 1970.

5: “In A Decade, Urban Dwellers Will Have to Wear Gas Masks to Survive Air Pollution.”
Life magazine stated in January 1970 that scientist had “solid experimental and theoretical evidence” to believe that “in a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution … by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by one half.”
Despite the prediction, air quality has been improving worldwide according to the World Health Organization. Air pollution has also sharply declined in industrialized countries. Carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas environmentalists are worried about today, is odorless, invisible and harmless to humans in normal amounts.

6: “Childbearing [Will Be] A Punishable Crime Against Society, Unless the Parents Hold a Government License.”
David Brower, the first executive director of The Sierra Club made the above claim and went on to say that “[a]ll potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.” Brower was also essential in founding Friends of the Earth and the League Of Conservation Voters and much of the modern environmental movement.
Brower believed that most environmental problems were ultimately attributable to new technology that allowed humans to pass natural limits on population size. He famously stated before his death in 2000 that “all technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent” and repeatedly advocated for mandatory birth control.
Today, the only major government to ever get close to his vision has been China, which ended its one-child policy last October.

7: “By the Year 2000 … There Won’t Be Any More Crude Oil.”
On Earth Day in 1970 ecologist Kenneth Watt famously predicted that the world would run out of oil saying, “You’ll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
Numerous academics like Watt predicted that American oil production peaked in 1970 and would gradually decline, likely causing a global economic meltdown. However, the successful application of massive hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, caused American oil production to come roaring back and there is currently too much oil on the market.
American oil and natural gas reserves are at their highest levels since 1972 and American oil production in 2014 was 80 percent higher than in 2008 thanks to fracking.
Furthermore, the U.S. now controls the world’s largest untapped oil reserve, the Green River Formation in Colorado. This formation alone contains up to 3 trillion barrels of untapped oil shale, half of which may be recoverable. That’s five and a half times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. This single geologic formation could contain more oil than the rest of the world’s proven reserves combined