"ENVIRONUST"

"Fred G. Mackey" wrote in news:yJ6dnXoKsd44XvXbnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

Would you say any injury is worse now than in 1970?

: > That the vast majority of scientists believe that man is playing a : > significant role in global warming.

Oh please.... And man lived with dinosaurs on a 6000 year old Earth. I know it's true because there is a museum in KY that says so!

: > And smog is down 57% from 1970. Happy now?

Where? Certainly not LA or Houston or a dozen other big cities

: >> EPA studies show the air to be 57% cleaner now than it was in 1970. And : >> that's in absolute terms, not relative ones.

Hmm. Is that an EPA gutted by the flat earth Bushistas?

: to destroy all that : America stands for. :

Like endless neocon wars of conquest and occupation?

The air quality in the Los Angeles basin has improved every year for at least as long as I have lived there. (whole life) And I was born in 1958.

But that is just a statistic. To me it is totally obvious how much the air, ground and water quality have improved compared to even just 25 years ago.

Dan

Man has only been recording decent weather data _anywhere_ since the 1880s, so I'd say the issue is far from settled. Remember "The Coming Ice Age" (Scientific American, 1978)? For all we know it may be back in fashion next decade.

That's only one of several unsettled questions. Before I jump on the Kyoto bandwagon I'd like to see open debate on at least these followup questions:

1. How much harm will GW actually do if it happens? And how much good? (For instance, I suspect places like Canada would become much more comfortable to live in and have higher crop yields than now.)
2. Quantify how much it will alleviate that harm if we make the changes. And how much it will cost, both in money and human lives.

(The EPA's CAFE rules now kill about 2200 people per year by forcing* them into smaller cars where they're more likely to die in wrecks. Anyone who still says the rules are a good thing ought to have to show that the pollution they avoid saves MORE human lives. I doubt it.)

• Yes, when the government limits the supply of large vehicles or makes them cost more it really is FORCING people out of them, even if the bureaucrats leave it up to the market to conduct the resulting game of "musical chairs".

1. In what cheaper ways might we either reverse the warming or alleviate the harm? Hint: If it happens and is bad, it's almost certainly cheap and easy to undo; see
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