Posted on 06/23/2012 6:32:17 AM PDT by george76
Colorados two Democratic senators sided with the White House on Wednesday when they voted to affirm what one GOP senator called the centerpiece of President Obamas war on coal.
The rule, which proponents say is necessary to limit harmful emissions from coal-fired power plants, but that opponents say will destroy jobs and cause energy prices to skyrocket, narrowly survived an attempt at repeal yesterday.
Mark Udall and Michael Bennet opposed a measure that would have overturned the controversial EPA rule. The measure failed on a 46-to-53 vote yesterday.
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Udall and Bennet joined seven other Senate Democrats from major coal-producing states who opposed Inhofes amendment.
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The EPA rule will not go into effect until 2014, but both coal-industry supporters and the Obama administration have forecast doom if their side failed.
The National Economic Research Associates found that the EPA rule and other finalized and pending EPA regulations for power plants using coal could cost 183,000 jobs annually
(Excerpt) Read more at thecoloradoobserver.com ...
Under the new normal for presidential power President Romney can tell the EPA not to enforce the law.
My problem is with the DEFINITION of what constitutes any kind of “harmful emmissions”.
Clearly, sufides or sulfur dioxide, metallic elements, particulates, various forms of oxides of nitrogen, and uncombusted hydrocarbons are undesirable, but the two main products of combustion, carbon dioxide and water vapor, are both parts of the chain of life, and as such, should be permitted to exhaust freely into the atmosphere.
No one tags water vapor as “harmful”, and it would be impossible to regulate the presence or absence of water vapor anyway. But as a so-called “greenhouse gas”, water vapor is a MUCH more potent compound than carbon dioxide ever could be, if only because there is so much more water vapor than carbon dioxide in our atmosphere at any given time. By a factor of some thirty to well over one hundred times the content by percentage of the total of all atmospheric gases.
Air Composition
The sea-level composition of air (in percent by volume at the temperature of 15 degrees C and the pressure of 101325 Pa) is given below.
Name-Symbol-Percent by Volume
Nitrogen-N2- 78.084 %
Oxygen-O2- 20.9476 %
Argon-Ar- 0.934 %
Carbon Dioxide-CO2- 0.0384 %
Neon-Ne- 0.001818 %
Methane-CH4- 0.0002 %
Helium-He- 0.000524 %
Krypton-Kr- 0.000114 %
Hydrogen-H2- 0.00005 %
Xenon-Xe- 0.0000087 %
Water vapor is a highly variable component of the atmosphere, ranging from less than 1% to more than 4% of the volume of a given amount of air, and is expressed as “relative humidity”.
Source:
CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics
by David R. Lide, Editor-in-Chief
1997 Edition
The 16th and 17th amendments to the Constitution should be repealed. [Briefly, for you liberals/socialists/democRATS out there, that is taxation of income, and election to the senate by popular vote]. The liberals/socialists/democRATs would not vote for the repeal of the 16th, because most of their constituencies are takers. The 17th on the other hand, you moochers and takers should go along with, right?
5.56mm
The 16th and 17th amendments to the Constitution should be repealed. [Briefly, for you liberals/socialists/democRATS out there, that is taxation of income, and election to the senate by popular vote]. The liberals/socialists/democRATs would not vote for the repeal of the 16th, because most of their constituencies are takers. The 17th on the other hand, you moochers and takers should go along with, right?
5.56mm
All that a new president would have to do is tell the EPA to stop calling CO2 a dangerous pollutant (reverse Dec 2009 EPA finding).
I hate Colorado commies!
The fundamental problem with this situation is measurement and incentive. Zero doesn’t exist anymore because we can measure parts per to near infinity.
The second part is incentive. What bureaucrat is going to eliminate their own job? They cannot by basic self-interest be honest in any debate that risks their livelihood.
It happened with “lead poisoning” in paint. For years lead level blood measurements in children were falling and fell low enough that it was obvious we “won” the war on lead poisoning in children. How did HUD/EPA respond? They halved the acceptable level without any science to back it up and the “crisis” began anew.
How many jobs saved?
If he does that he’ll just be setting the stage for the next liberal POTUS. We need to get back our Constitution by Constitutional means, not the most expeditious ones.
We do that by successfully implementing our policies over generations and we do that by turning the economy around and electing the most conservative House and Senate we can.
That gives us SCOTUS appointments and legislation stuffing the genie back into the bottle. In the case of liberty, fighting fire with fire just burns up our rights.
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