Wednesday, June 28, 2006

INHOFE REACTS TO U.S. SUPREME COURT AGREEING TO HEAR CO2 CASE

Press release:

Washington, D.C. - Senator. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works commented on today's announcement by the U.S. Supreme Court to agree to hear the case of whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must regulate carbon dioxide to fight global warming under the Clean Air Act.

"It is my hope that the U.S. Supreme Court will bring finality to this issue by rejecting this meritless lawsuit," Senator Inhofe said. "For the past 30 years, Congress has addressed and legislated extensively on the highly controversial and complex subject of global climate change. It has always been clear, however, that the Clean Air Act was intended to regulate pollution, not emissions of carbon dioxide. "Unfortunately, those who have failed to impose their draconian ideology through legislation are now trying to use the courts to overturn the will of Congress."

Senator Inhofe has been active in climate change litigation, having most recently filed an amicus brief earlier this year urging the dismissal of a nuisance lawsuit that was brought against American Electric Power Co., Southern Co., Xcel Energy Inc., Cinergy Corp. and Tennessee Valley Authority.





GREENIE "REASONING"

Post lifted from Taranto

Parade magazine, the Sunday newspaper supplement, has joined the global-warming alarmists with a cover story titled "Why You Can't Ignore the Changing Climate." Author Eugene Linden writes:

From the Fertile Crescent to the Yucatan peninsula, past civilizations made the fatal mistake of assuming that good weather would continue. An abrupt shift to drought in Mesopotamia 4,200 years ago probably spelled the doom of the Akkadian culture, which united city-states into the first known empire. Others see the fingerprints of climate in the collapse of the Mayans around 900 A.D., the disappearance of the Anasazi from the American Southwest a few centuries later and the end of Norse expansion into the New World in the 14th century. A recurrent pattern of history has been for civilizations to take root and flourish while the weather is good, only to fall when the weather suddenly changes.

You'd think that this history would put things in some perspective, reminding us that weather and climate have never been constant and are beyond human control. Quite the contrary. As reader Gayle Trotter notes:

These ancient civilizations did not assume good weather would continue. In fact, they had elaborate religious rituals (sometimes involving human sacrifice and infanticide) to attempt to influence the weather. I would argue that our current environmental policy is about as effective at influencing the weather as their ancient religious ceremonies, and indeed, environmentalism has become a new religion in our age.

Sure enough, Linden advises that you can help stop "warming the globe" by engaging in various rituals: "buy a fuel-efficient car; take mass transit; and, when you can, bicycle or walk to work."






Drinking sewage unpopular

So it's an unlikely alternative to the dams that Greenies hate

The first Australian mayor to be dumped from office for backing recycled drinking water has warned Toowoomba Mayor Di Thorley she risks the same fate. Ten years ago Caboolture Shire residents ditched their mayor, John White, after he had served for 16 years on the council. He blamed his demise on a plan to recycle purified sewage from the local wastewater treatment plant. "I didn't see it as an election issue but very emotive terms were used and the topic was used to divide the public," he said. "One day I was the rooster, the next I was a feather duster."

Cr Thorley, who plans to contest the 2008 council election, is backing a similar plan for drought-stricken Toowoomba, where residents are facing a July 29 referendum on water recycling. Mr White warned she risked a similar fate and he called for a co-ordinated approach from the State Government instead of allowing individual councils to cop the flak. "If (her) opposition chooses to use this as an issue then she will become a feather duster as well," he said.

He admitted that if he had been able to foresee the deep divisions the debate caused he would have advocated recycling for uses other than drinking. Cr Thorley said that although she did not underestimate how concerned some residents were about the issue she would not back down. "I've acknowledged that people take this seriously but I have not seen that as a reason to make me lose courage," she said. "I think 1997 in Caboolture was a very different time. "They weren't faced with running out of water, no one thought Wivenhoe Dam could run dry and you didn't have climate change in the media day after day."

Mr White said he was pleased the debate had led Caboolture to spend millions of dollars to improve its water treatment facilities and to embrace recycling of water for parks, gardens and sporting fields. "It defies logic to treat millions of litres of water and then dump it into the ocean," he said. In 1999 Caboolture upgraded its sewage treatment works, treating the effluent to A-class standard rather than building an outfall pipeline to Moreton Bay. The recycled effluent is now used for new housing and industrial developments and major water users including school grounds, the town's showgrounds and sporting fields, parks and gardens, roadworks and building sites.

Source

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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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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The problem with the recycled sewage plant proposed for Toowoomba is that it just would not work.

It is not possible to produce 11,000 ML of recycled water from 8,000 ML of sewage. Toowoomba City Council also had nowhere for the RO waste stream to go. Acland Coal did not want it. Singapore pumps its RO waste stream into the sea.

The plant could never have been built for $68 million - closer to $150-200 million would be more accurate when you take into account the hundreds of acres of evaporation ponds required which were not included in the budget.

Regardless of your view on recycled water use, the no vote in Toowoomba was correct because the proposal was a dud.