How Could Pollution Possibly Harm You?

It’s NO longer science, NOT even common sense; it’s ‘corporment’ at its worst!

The Exponential Growth Economy Dilemma is Fast Shaping up

1. The only way to live in this world is through exponential growth economy.

2. Exponential growth economy is responsible for the deadly pollution and looming environmental collapse and extinction of human race.

Solution: Deny pollution’s role in the environmental collapse; sue EPA to prove the point.

Up to 20 states have filed suits against EPA asking U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. to review EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases endanger both human health and welfare. The finding, which was released in December 2009  (it was prompted by a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling), enables the agency to regulate GHG emissions under the existing Clean Air Act.

States sue EPA to stop greenhouse gas rules

At least 15 U.S. states have sued the Environmental Protection Agency seeking to stop it from issuing rules controlling greenhouse gas emissions until it reexamines whether the pollution harms human health.

Florida, Indiana, South Carolina and at least nine other states filed the petitions in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, states said.

They joined petitions filed last month by Virginia, Texas and Alabama.

The Obama administration has long said it would attack greenhouse gas emissions with EPA regulation if Congress failed to pass a climate bill.

The EPA is set to issue regulations later this month that would require autos and light trucks to increase energy efficiency. That would trigger rules on large emitters like power plants requiring them to get permits showing they are using the best technology available to reduce emissions.

The state petitions call for the EPA to reopen hearings on the so-called “endangerment finding” the agency issued last year declaring the emissions dangerous to people.

“If EPA doesn’t reopen the hearings we will move forward to try to stop them from regulating greenhouse gases,” said Brian Gottstein, an assistant to Virginia’s Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli.

The states have complained that the EPA relied too heavily from reports by the U.N.’s climate science panel which included information that exaggerated the melting of Himalayan glaciers.

The EPA said it was confident it would withstand legal challenges on the issue. “The question of the science is settled,” spokeswoman Adora Andy said. The science “came from an array of highly respected, peer-reviewed sources from both within the United States and across the globe, and took into consideration hundreds of thousands of comments from members of the public, which were addressed in the finding,” she said.

Allison Wood, a lawyer at Hunton & Williams, said the suits could push some lawmakers to support the climate bill if they oppose EPA regulation and the legislation preempts the agency from taking action.

About the same number of states support the EPA. In January, 16 states including New York and California asked the court for permission to support the EPA in industry lawsuits seeking to stop the agency from regulating the gases from stationary sources like power plants and factories.

Copyright: Reuters – http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62I4DP20100319

Make NO mistake: Preserving the lives of corporations is more important than preventing the extinction of human race! [Are they too stupid to matter?]

Related Links:

• British Govt Makes Another Straw Man

• 133,000,000 Wise Monkeys
• Google’s Top 10 List of ‘Holy Cows’
• Ten Climate Change Lies, Myths and Misconceptions

Background Links:

• EPA Declares PHE in Libby, Montana

• “Don’t worry, boss, I know what to say!”

• The things EPA capo won’t do!
• California Sues EPA on GHG Emissions
• Antienvironmental, Antisocial, Anti American!
• Friend of the Environment
• Shameful EPA slammed with yet another lawsuit

• Arnie Knows the Score!
• EPA Plays Piggy In the Middle
• The White House of Horror!!
• Disgrace, Disgrace, You’re Such an Ugly Disgrace …
• EPA official resigns citing Dow Chemical

Related EPA Links:

• Background page on Libby Asbestos Site
• Protect Your Family from Asbestos-Contaminated Vermiculite Insulation
• National Priorities List (NPL)

The Great Southern California ShakeOut

Facilitating Corporate War Against Nature

‘Scientific Mandate’ Helps Corporment* Technicians Alienate Scared Audiences from Nature

In the same way “BERT DUCKS and Covers” helped to fan the flames of Cold War, the “Great Southern California Shakeout”  and its  “drop, cover and hold on” one-liner are engineering public alienation from nature on behalf of the Corporment.

The enemy has changed, from the old Cold war Adversary, Soviet Union, to Mother Nature, but the tried and tested mantra has remained the same: “Our lifestyle is not negotiable [sic.]”

The Corporment can’t afford having large numbers of people going around worrying about how to protect nature against their usual business.

*[Corporment = Government ruled by corporate interests]

Ever Heard of ‘Duck and Cover’?

Now, it’s:  “drop, cover and hold on”

And be sure to recite a prayer for the earthquake dead …

The following is a public information notice:

Great Southern California Shakeout results provide new communication strategies

Researchers who devised the largest earthquake preparedness event ever undertaken in the United States say one of the biggest challenges was translating devastation projections from a hypothetical magnitude 7.8 San Andreas Fault temblor into timely, usable information to the more than 5 million California participants in 2008.

Known as the Great Southern California Shakeout, the event was designed by more than 300 experts in fields including earth sciences, engineering, policy, economics and public health, said University of Colorado at Boulder Research Professor Keith Porter, who coordinated estimates of physical damages in the scenario. He said the interests of the scientists — including high-tech research and state-of-the-art projections — did not always coincide with concerns of the general public and emergency preparedness planners looking for timely, simple information on issues.

“One of the biggest challenges of the ShakeOut was to get scientists to speak the language of citizens,” said Porter of CU-Boulder’s civil, environmental and architectural engineering department. “While many researchers were concerned about advancing the state of science through different modeling scenarios and debate, the citizens made it clear to us they needed the big picture.”

Porter gave a presentation on the subject at the 2010 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held Feb. 18-22 in San Diego. Porter’s talk was part of a session titled “Earthquake Science and Advocacy: Helping Californians Live Along the San Andreas Fault.” The Great Southern California ShakeOut event was led by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Pushing the limits of science, including efforts like the ShakeOut, almost invariably creates a lack of consensus among scientists that can cause confusion in the public sector leading to “ambiguity aversion” — a preference by people to deal with known risks and to avoid dealing with risks where there is significant disagreement about the level of uncertainty, said Porter. “We found these people needed a single, discreet, story, which led us to explore and present what we thought was a single, realistic outcome of the hypothetical earthquake, as opposed to a discussion of possible outcomes.”

The 2008 ShakeOut scenario and a follow-up 2009 ShakeOut exercise involving more than 5 million Californians participating in “drop, cover and hold on” earthquake drills and other family, school and organizational emergency plans were huge successes, causing the USGS and collaborators to make the ShakeOut an annual event, Porter said. “Our hope is the activities undertaken by participants will become second nature,” he said. “In a sense it is similar to people taking CPR courses annually to keep up to speed.”

The USGS team that created the ShakeOut is now creating an emergency preparedness scenario known as ARkStorm to simulate the outcome of a series of massive West Coast storms similar to those that pounded California in 1861 and 1862. Those storms lasted for 45 days, flooded vast areas of northern and southern California, submerged a swath of the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys 300 miles long and up to 60 miles wide and inundated large areas of Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Such storms draw heat and moisture from the tropical Pacific Ocean, forming “atmospheric rivers” that cause damage on the same scale of earthquakes and are projected to become more intense as a result of climate change, said Porter. Porter is leading the ARkStorm team that is assessing the potential outcome from such a storm in terms of physical damages, repair costs and the restoration time for buildings, dams, levees, harbors, bridges, roads, water supply systems and electric power.

Contact: Keith Porter
Keith.Porter@Colorado.edu
303-492-2732
University of Colorado at Boulder

YOU can be smart like Bert, but you need a shelter on your back, too!

Skeptics could order their own personal earthquake-proof shelter from the nearest branch of [name and address withheld :)]

Brewster Body Armor offers some protection, but is more mobile than the mobile shelter! Source: Flickr

Mobile Shelter. Be sure to duck your head down and under the shelter when the earthquake strikes! Source: Flickr

And there’s protection for your pooch, too … Source: Flickr

Related Links:

• Ongoing Seismicity, More Avalanches in Calif, Alaska
• Earthquakes