NUTTY GREENIE LAWSUIT TOSSED OUT

California's pioneering lawsuit to cap global warming gases from coal-fired power plants as distant as Kentucky and Florida was tossed out of federal court Thursday on jurisdictional grounds. U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska in Manhattan ruled that the case brought by state Attorney General Bill Lockyer and prosecutors for seven other states and New York City raised sweeping questions of public policy best resolved by Congress and the president, not the courts.

At issue were emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary heat-trapping gas that alters the Earth's temperature, and the nation's highest emitters of the gas - old coal-fired power plants, mainly in the Midwest and the South.

Lockyer and an attorney for a companion complaint brought by three Northeast land conservancies said they would appeal the decision. The plaintiffs - including Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin and New York - sought a court order requiring the nation's top five power producers to cut carbon dioxide emissions every year for at least a decade, by an amount to be determined later by the court.

The electric power industry argued that the technology to capture these gases in the plant doesn't exist, at least not at affordable prices

In her ruling, Preska said the plaintiffs sought "to impose by judicial fiat" limits on carbon dioxide emissions that Congress and President Bush explicitly refused to mandate. "These actions present non-justiciable political questions that are consigned to the political branches, not the judiciary," Preska concluded.

Lockyer said the opposite is true. "When Congress has not taken action on a pressing environmental issue, states have the right to take legal action to protect themselves," Lockyer said in a press release responding to the dismissal. "We filed this lawsuit because global warming poses a serious threat to our environment, our public health, and our economy. We must act now, not later, to combat this threat."

Attorneys for the targeted power companies said they were not surprised by the dismissal. "We were curious why we were included in the first place," said Pat Hemlepp, spokesman for American Electric Power Co. of Columbus, Ohio. "We were doing much of what they were seeking through voluntary reductions of carbon dioxide." The other four companies named in the suit were Southern Co., Xcel Energy, Cinergy Corp. and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The companies own about 175 plants in 20 states that together emit about 652 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, roughly 25 percent of the carbon dioxide from power plants in the nation, according to the suit.

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NO SIGN OF PROGRESS ON THE OZONE HOLE

But the Greenie faithful still have hope. They've been waiting since 1987, when the treaty to ban CFCs was signed

The seasonal ozone hole over Antarctica has widened to a near-record size, at approximately 27 million square km, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said today.

Despite the statistic, WMO ozone expert Dr Geir Braathen did not expect the record measurement of 28 million square km, which was reached in 2003, to be broken. "We expect the size of the ozone hole to be in the same region as in 2000 and 2003 but not to break any record," Dr Braathen said at a press conference to mark the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer. "It's too early to say the situation is improving," Braathen said. "Ozone depletion [is occurring] at a slower rate but we need five to 10 more years of observation."

The hole in the ozone layer is created by atmospheric conditions and pollution and fluctuates according to season and prevailing weather. Ozone, a molecule of oxygen, is a stratospheric shield for life on Earth, which filters out dangerous ultraviolet rays from the Sun that damage vegetation and can cause skin cancer and cataracts

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Lessons from Chicago

Over a hundred years ago, the entire city of Chicago was lifted up above the waterline. Why can't we do the same with New Orleans today?

Chicago was built on reclaimed swampland and much of the city is only a few feet above Lake Michigan's water surface. Getting fed up of constant flooding, inadequate sanitation and the threat of disease, something had to be done. In the mid-1850s, therefore, the city authorities introduced legislation to overcome the problem - that the streets be lifted. Over the next 20 years, the city was lifted up in the air, out of harms way, by between one and five metres. Famously, there are reports of the Tremont Hotel, a six-story building, being jacked up while the guests remained in their rooms. This remains one of the most amazing engineering feats of modern times. The flood risk was effectively eliminated.

However, just as work was being competed, a huge section of Chicago burned to the ground, decimating an area of some 2,000 acres. Sod's law. One third of the city's population of 300,000 inhabitants were made homeless. More than 17,000 buildings - $400million-worth of construction in the value of the day - were destroyed. Incredibly, the city wasn't defeated. The triumph of the original engineering solution increased the resolve that from this terrible destruction would arise a new city, and a new school of architecture.

The lessons learned provided an incentive to invent, manufacture and legislate for steel fire protection - something that had been unthought of before then. The city's great Columbian Exposition less than 20 years later featured the safety elevator that enabled designers to create the magnificent highrise skyline, much of which we still see today. Chicago's 'natural' disaster was used as a springboard to create new city.

Imagine if that disaster had happened today. Someone would be demanding to know why US President George W Bush had not invested in more research in the steel insulation industry; why nobody had risk assessed the chances of a cow kicking over a candle in a barn (reputed to be the cause of the fire, although there are suggestions of a porcine cover-up); or why so many descendants of immigrants were adversely affected. Probably, there would be major headlines about British backpackers traumatised by coming into contact with black people, and scientifically verifiable tales about how global warming, caused by the construction of the city in the first place, had created the tinderbox conditions for the conflagration.

More here

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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