Warning: Drinking Tea Party Rhetoric May Cause Cancer

[Bfgrn]

Sorry as soon as I saw HUFFPO I started laughing uncontrollably and couldn't read any further...

Gracious, you ARE easily amused. Too cute.

Yes HUFFPO amuses me, just as Rush Limbaugh does. I consider them two sides of the same coin...

Posting that article on here is no different than someone citing Rush Limbaugh, I just find it hilarious that the same people who point out that Rush or Hannity or whoever are not to be taken seriously, will post from HUFFPO and get offended when its treated the same way...

An example of HUFFPO headlines on any given day is along the lines of; funny videos or pics depicting things ranging from everyday conservative bashing to stupid pet tricks, or whatever was on SNL that previous weekend... They throw this crap in there to fill in the spaces...

I check Huffington Post daily. To compare it to Rush Limbaugh or Hannity is ignorant. I'm willing to bet there is more criticism of President Obama based in FACT on the Huffington Post than Rush's emotional based right wing slander.

 

[gslack]

The EPA has paid the American Lung Association $20 million over the last 10 years. So according to your own theory that whoever pays gets whatever results they want, the report by the AMLA is just propaganda paid for by the EPA. Documents procured through the FOIA show that the AMLA has been in cahoots with the EPA for years.

You are hoisted on your own petard.

I won't bother wasting my time disputing the claims made by the AMLA since according to your own theory of truth the source of the funding is the only thing that matters.

Isn't it AMAZING that the 'science' paid for by big polluters ALWAYS says pollution will not harm you.

It is truly ironic you admit the correlation between smoking and cancer is well established. It wasn't always well established. The SAME 'scientists', think tanks, PR firms and echo chamber that fought that correlation funded by big tobacco are the SAME 'scientists', think tanks, PR firms and echo chamber that now say pollution will not harm you and global warming is not real.

American Lung Association Report Highlights Toxic Health Threat of Coal-fired Power Plants, Calls for EPA to Reduce Emissions and Save Lives

Washington, D.C. (March 8, 2011)—

The American Lung Association today released Toxic Air: The Case for Cleaning Up Coal-fired Power Plants, a new report that documents the range of hazardous air pollutants emitted from power plants and the urgent need to clean them up to protect public health. The report highlights the wide range of uncontrolled pollutants from these plants including: toxic metals and metal-like substances such as arsenic and lead; mercury; dioxins; chemicals known or thought to cause cancer, including formaldehyde, benzene and radioisotopes; and acid gases such as hydrogen chloride. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is required to issue a proposal to cleanup this toxic pollution by March 16.

The report details the dangerous mix of toxic air pollutants that flow from the stacks of uncontrolled coal burning power plants and the adverse health effects associated with these pollutants. The report also discusses the technologies that are available for dramatically cutting these emissions—technologies that are commercially available and proven to work.

“It’s time that we end the ‘toxic loophole’ that has allowed coal-burning power plants to operate without any federal limits on emissions of mercury, arsenic, dioxin, acid gases such as hydrogen chloride and other dangerous pollutants,” said Charles D. Connor, president and CEO of the American Lung Association. “The American public has waited long enough—more than two decades. We are counting on EPA to protect all Americans from the health risks imposed by these dangerous pollutants once and for all.”

Key facts highlighted in the report:

* Coal-fired power plants produce more hazardous air pollution in the United States than any other industrial pollution sources;

* The Clean Air Act requires the control of hazardous air pollutants from coal-fired power plants, but absent these new rules, no national standards exist to limit these pollutants from these plants; and

* More than 400 coal-fired power plants located in 46 states across the country release in excess of 386,000 tons of hazardous air pollutants into the atmosphere each year.

“People living closest to these plants, especially children, seniors and those with chronic disease, face the greatest risk, but it doesn’t stop there,” said Connor. “Pollution from coal-fired power plants takes flight and travels far into other states—threatening public health.”

Many of these pollutants “hitchhike” on the fine particulate matter, or particle pollution, that the power plants also produce. Particle pollution from power plants has been recently estimated to kill approximately 13,000 people a year. Most coal-fired plants are concentrated in the Midwest and Southeast.

Hazardous air pollutants are toxic emissions that are known or suspected to cause cancer or other serious health effects, such as reproductive problems or birth defects. People most at risk include: infants, children and teenagers; older adults; pregnant women; people with asthma and other lung diseases; people with cardiovascular disease; diabetics; people with low incomes; and healthy adults who work or exercise outdoors.

“Power plant pollution kills people,” said Connor. “It threatens the brains and nervous system of children. It can cause cancer, heart attacks and strokes.”

The report identified control technologies that are currently in use in some plants that are readily available for installation at other plants to curb these toxic emissions. This modern pollution control technology will reduce other lethal pollutants as well, including particle pollution. The law sets the cleanup requirements based on actual performance facilities, but each power plant will select the specific pollution control strategies to reduce their emissions.

“Our report shows how critical this cleanup of acid gases, metals and other toxics is to public health,” Connor added. “We need EPA to step up and safeguard Americans from toxic air pollution.”

The report is a summary of a technical analysis of these emissions prepared for the Lung Association by Environmental Health & Engineering, Inc. The Lung Association is also releasing the full analysis.

Ignore whatever suits your ignorant dogma. If you actually look at the grants being given to the ALA, they are spent on remedial actions and public education required because of diseases exacerbated by pollution.

Instead, you choose to spew the paid for propaganda from JunkScience.com.

IRONY ALERT: YOU said the correlation between smoking and cancer is well established. Steven J. Milloy who runs JunkScience.com disagrees! Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death.

Steven J. Milloy is a columnist for Fox News and a paid advocate for Phillip Morris, ExxonMobil and other corporations.

Milloy's junkscience.com website was reviewed and revised by a public relations firm hired by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Milloy also worked as executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), which was established in 1993 by Philip Morris and its public relations firm "to expand and assist Philip Morris in its efforts with issues in targeted states." A 1994 Philip Morris memo listed TASSC among its "Tools to Affect Legislative Decisions". According to its 1997 annual report, TASSC "sponsored" junkscience.com.

The New Republic reported that Milloy, who is presented by Fox News as an independent journalist, was under contract to provide consulting services to Philip Morris through the end of 2005. In 2000 and 2001, for example, Milloy received a total of $180,000 in payments from Philip Morris for consulting services. A spokesperson for Fox News stated, "Fox News was unaware of Milloy's connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed." wiki


I keep hearing conservatives argue they are for protecting our environment, just like liberals. Yet, turd brains like you deny pollution, know toxins and carcinogens are a hazard to human health.

Ironic, the Soviet Union is a environmental waste land and a nuclear contamination time bomb that threatens the world. Russia had their Marxists, and we have our Marketists. Two peas in a pod who will take us to the SAME ends.

Just as the negative effects of a high fever do not certify the health benefits of the opposite extreme, hypothermia, the dismal failure of communism, seeking complete government control of the economy, does not certify the economic benefits of the opposite extreme, total economic non-intervention.

Got anything BUT your word on any of that? If so please produce a link or something, if not (which is what I think knowing you) we can call this more bs and ignore it...

 

[Bfgrn]

The EPA has paid the American Lung Association $20 million over the last 10 years. So according to your own theory that whoever pays gets whatever results they want, the report by the AMLA is just propaganda paid for by the EPA. Documents procured through the FOIA show that the AMLA has been in cahoots with the EPA for years.

You are hoisted on your own petard.

I won't bother wasting my time disputing the claims made by the AMLA since according to your own theory of truth the source of the funding is the only thing that matters.

Ignore whatever suits your ignorant dogma. If you actually look at the grants being given to the ALA, they are spent on remedial actions and public education required because of diseases exacerbated by pollution.

Instead, you choose to spew the paid for propaganda from JunkScience.com.

IRONY ALERT: YOU said the correlation between smoking and cancer is well established. Steven J. Milloy who runs JunkScience.com disagrees! Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death.

Steven J. Milloy is a columnist for Fox News and a paid advocate for Phillip Morris, ExxonMobil and other corporations.

Milloy's junkscience.com website was reviewed and revised by a public relations firm hired by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Milloy also worked as executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), which was established in 1993 by Philip Morris and its public relations firm "to expand and assist Philip Morris in its efforts with issues in targeted states." A 1994 Philip Morris memo listed TASSC among its "Tools to Affect Legislative Decisions". According to its 1997 annual report, TASSC "sponsored" junkscience.com.

The New Republic reported that Milloy, who is presented by Fox News as an independent journalist, was under contract to provide consulting services to Philip Morris through the end of 2005. In 2000 and 2001, for example, Milloy received a total of $180,000 in payments from Philip Morris for consulting services. A spokesperson for Fox News stated, "Fox News was unaware of Milloy's connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed." wiki


I keep hearing conservatives argue they are for protecting our environment, just like liberals. Yet, turd brains like you deny pollution, know toxins and carcinogens are a hazard to human health.

Ironic, the Soviet Union is a environmental waste land and a nuclear contamination time bomb that threatens the world. Russia had their Marxists, and we have our Marketists. Two peas in a pod who will take us to the SAME ends.

Just as the negative effects of a high fever do not certify the health benefits of the opposite extreme, hypothermia, the dismal failure of communism, seeking complete government control of the economy, does not certify the economic benefits of the opposite extreme, total economic non-intervention.

Got anything BUT your word on any of that? If so please produce a link or something, if not (which is what I think knowing you) we can call this more bs and ignore it...

Steven Milloy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[gslack]

Ignore whatever suits your ignorant dogma. If you actually look at the grants being given to the ALA, they are spent on remedial actions and public education required because of diseases exacerbated by pollution.

Instead, you choose to spew the paid for propaganda from JunkScience.com.

IRONY ALERT: YOU said the correlation between smoking and cancer is well established. Steven J. Milloy who runs JunkScience.com disagrees! Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death.

Steven J. Milloy is a columnist for Fox News and a paid advocate for Phillip Morris, ExxonMobil and other corporations.

Milloy's junkscience.com website was reviewed and revised by a public relations firm hired by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Milloy also worked as executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), which was established in 1993 by Philip Morris and its public relations firm "to expand and assist Philip Morris in its efforts with issues in targeted states." A 1994 Philip Morris memo listed TASSC among its "Tools to Affect Legislative Decisions". According to its 1997 annual report, TASSC "sponsored" junkscience.com.

The New Republic reported that Milloy, who is presented by Fox News as an independent journalist, was under contract to provide consulting services to Philip Morris through the end of 2005. In 2000 and 2001, for example, Milloy received a total of $180,000 in payments from Philip Morris for consulting services. A spokesperson for Fox News stated, "Fox News was unaware of Milloy's connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed." wiki


I keep hearing conservatives argue they are for protecting our environment, just like liberals. Yet, turd brains like you deny pollution, know toxins and carcinogens are a hazard to human health.

Ironic, the Soviet Union is a environmental waste land and a nuclear contamination time bomb that threatens the world. Russia had their Marxists, and we have our Marketists. Two peas in a pod who will take us to the SAME ends.

Just as the negative effects of a high fever do not certify the health benefits of the opposite extreme, hypothermia, the dismal failure of communism, seeking complete government control of the economy, does not certify the economic benefits of the opposite extreme, total economic non-intervention.

Got anything BUT your word on any of that? If so please produce a link or something, if not (which is what I think knowing you) we can call this more bs and ignore it...

Steven Milloy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

wikkipedia... yeah my kids in high school aren't allowed to use wikkipedia as a source for any reports... I guess they are to apt to be based on OPINION rather than fact these days. Kind of depends on who writes them..

I checked the link you gave after the fact and noticed one glaring thing... Where is the proof in any of it? All I saw was links to left wing rags for references. I suppose I could do the same thing with Mann couldn't I... yeah I could, especially if I use a wikki article with opinion pieces and op-eds for reference....

AND BTW , he argues that the studies regarding second hand smoke causing cancer are dubious. NOT QUITE what you were claiming huh... Funny...

Try a little honesty next time bfgrn, don't exaggerate the claims just tel what they say as it is... That way we are less likely to dismiss your BS off-hand. But then exaggerated claims are what you greenpeace posters are all about anyway..

 

[Bfgrn]

Got anything BUT your word on any of that? If so please produce a link or something, if not (which is what I think knowing you) we can call this more bs and ignore it...

Steven Milloy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

wikkipedia... yeah my kids in high school aren't allowed to use wikkipedia as a source for any reports... I guess they are to apt to be based on OPINION rather than fact these days. Kind of depends on who writes them..

I checked the link you gave after the fact and noticed one glaring thing... Where is the proof in any of it? All I saw was links to left wing rags for references. I suppose I could do the same thing with Mann couldn't I... yeah I could, especially if I use a wikki article with opinion pieces and op-eds for reference....

AND BTW , he argues that the studies regarding second hand smoke causing cancer are dubious. NOT QUITE what you were claiming huh... Funny...

Try a little honesty next time bfgrn, don't exaggerate the claims just tel what they say as it is... That way we are less likely to dismiss your BS off-hand. But then exaggerated claims are what you greenpeace posters are all about anyway..

IRONY ALERT:

You dismiss wikkipedia (Wikipedia) then you cite it...make up your tiny little mind...

Let's delve into one of those 'left wing rags for references'

PUNDIT FOR HIRE.
Smoked Out
by Paul D. Thacker

Milloy has been affiliated with FoxNews.com since July 2000. On March 9, 2001, he wrote a column for the website headlined “secondhand smokescreen.” The piece attacked a study by researcher Stephen Hecht, who found that women living with smokers had higher levels of chemicals associated with risk of lung cancer. “If spin were science, Hecht would win a Nobel Prize,” Milloy wrote. For good measure, he heaped scorn on a 1993 Environmental Protection Agency report that also linked health risks and secondhand smoke.

Later that spring, he authored another smoking-related piece for FoxNews.com. In that one, he cast aside two decades of research on the dangers of exposure to secondhand smoke and concluded, “Secondhand smoke is annoying to many nonsmokers. That is the essence of the controversy and where the debate should lie—the rights of smokers to smoke in public places versus the rights of nonsmokers to be free of tobacco smoke.” You might chalk it up to Milloy’s contrarian nature. Or to his libertarian tendencies.

Except, all the while, he was on the payroll of big tobacco. According to Lisa Gonzalez, manager of external communications for Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, Milloy was under contract there through the end of last year. “In 2000 and 2001, some of the work he did was to monitor studies, and then we would distribute this information within to our different companies,” Gonzalez said. Although she couldn’t comment on fees paid to Milloy, a January 2001 Philip Morris budget report lists Milloy as a consultant and shows that he was budgeted for $92,500 in fees and expenses in both 2000 and 2001. Asked about Milloy’s tobacco ties, Paul Schur, director of media relations for Fox News, said, “Fox News was unaware of Milloy’s connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed.” Milloy could not be reached for comment.

Yet it’s all in the public record. The University of California at San Francisco maintains a database of seven million tobacco industry documents made public as part of the 1998 settlement between tobacco companies and state attorneys general. According to those documents, Milloy’s relationship to big tobacco goes back at least to March 1997, when he took over as executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (tassc), a front group established in 1993 by Philip Morris and p.r. firm apco Associates “to expand and assist Philip Morris in its efforts with issues in targeted states.” (Fumento was on the organization’s advisory board.)

Under Milloy, tassc sought to debunk a range of scientific theories that ran counter to the conservative viewpoint, from the dangers of breast implants to the need for stricter clean air standards. Philip Morris remained heavily invested in these efforts. A 1997 Philip Morris budget report includes a line item granting tassc $200,000. As executive director, Milloy also reached out to other allies within the industry. For instance, in September 1997, he sent a letter to Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation soliciting $50,000: “The grant will be used to further tassc’s efforts to educate the public, media and policymakers on priorities in public health,” he wrote.

The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition is now defunct. But one of Milloy’s nonprofits has the same acronym and a remarkably similar name: The Advancement of Sound Science Center. His Free Enterprise Action Institute also has tobacco links, with Thomas Borelli—a longtime Philip Morris executive—serving as its secretary.

It has become increasingly hard to defend tobacco or attack smoking studies, which is probably why Milloy’s more recent targets have included climate scientists like Mann. “Tobacco has lost most of these battles, but there is still opportunity to spread doubt about global warming,” says David Michaels, the chair of the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at George Washington University. Corporations with a stake in the global warming debate have been distributing their funds accordingly: Of the $3,056,783 raised in 2003 by the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (where Milloy is an unpaid adjunct analyst), $465,000 came from ExxonMobil. Milloy and Borelli’s latest enterprise is a mutual fund that seeks to counter pressure from environmental activists promoting corporate social responsibility.

Fox News can’t be expected to dig through the tobacco legacy documents every time one of its columnists writes about smoking issues. But, as far as Milloy, Fox News should be judged the same way tobacco companies were during their trials: What did they know, and when did they know it?

Fox News has certainly known since last spring that money from ExxonMobil was going to Milloy’s home-based charities. Perhaps the real reason the news organization tolerates Milloy is that his pro-industry, anti-environmentalist views dovetail nicely with those of its political commentators.

 

[gslack]

Steven Milloy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

wikkipedia... yeah my kids in high school aren't allowed to use wikkipedia as a source for any reports... I guess they are to apt to be based on OPINION rather than fact these days. Kind of depends on who writes them..

I checked the link you gave after the fact and noticed one glaring thing... Where is the proof in any of it? All I saw was links to left wing rags for references. I suppose I could do the same thing with Mann couldn't I... yeah I could, especially if I use a wikki article with opinion pieces and op-eds for reference....

AND BTW , he argues that the studies regarding second hand smoke causing cancer are dubious. NOT QUITE what you were claiming huh... Funny...

Try a little honesty next time bfgrn, don't exaggerate the claims just tel what they say as it is... That way we are less likely to dismiss your BS off-hand. But then exaggerated claims are what you greenpeace posters are all about anyway..

IRONY ALERT:

You dismiss wikkipedia (Wikipedia) then you cite it...make up your tiny little mind...

Let's delve into one of those 'left wing rags for references'

PUNDIT FOR HIRE.
Smoked Out
by Paul D. Thacker

Milloy has been affiliated with FoxNews.com since July 2000. On March 9, 2001, he wrote a column for the website headlined “secondhand smokescreen.” The piece attacked a study by researcher Stephen Hecht, who found that women living with smokers had higher levels of chemicals associated with risk of lung cancer. “If spin were science, Hecht would win a Nobel Prize,” Milloy wrote. For good measure, he heaped scorn on a 1993 Environmental Protection Agency report that also linked health risks and secondhand smoke.

Later that spring, he authored another smoking-related piece for FoxNews.com. In that one, he cast aside two decades of research on the dangers of exposure to secondhand smoke and concluded, “Secondhand smoke is annoying to many nonsmokers. That is the essence of the controversy and where the debate should lie—the rights of smokers to smoke in public places versus the rights of nonsmokers to be free of tobacco smoke.” You might chalk it up to Milloy’s contrarian nature. Or to his libertarian tendencies.

Except, all the while, he was on the payroll of big tobacco. According to Lisa Gonzalez, manager of external communications for Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, Milloy was under contract there through the end of last year. “In 2000 and 2001, some of the work he did was to monitor studies, and then we would distribute this information within to our different companies,” Gonzalez said. Although she couldn’t comment on fees paid to Milloy, a January 2001 Philip Morris budget report lists Milloy as a consultant and shows that he was budgeted for $92,500 in fees and expenses in both 2000 and 2001. Asked about Milloy’s tobacco ties, Paul Schur, director of media relations for Fox News, said, “Fox News was unaware of Milloy’s connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed.” Milloy could not be reached for comment.

Yet it’s all in the public record. The University of California at San Francisco maintains a database of seven million tobacco industry documents made public as part of the 1998 settlement between tobacco companies and state attorneys general. According to those documents, Milloy’s relationship to big tobacco goes back at least to March 1997, when he took over as executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (tassc), a front group established in 1993 by Philip Morris and p.r. firm apco Associates “to expand and assist Philip Morris in its efforts with issues in targeted states.” (Fumento was on the organization’s advisory board.)

Under Milloy, tassc sought to debunk a range of scientific theories that ran counter to the conservative viewpoint, from the dangers of breast implants to the need for stricter clean air standards. Philip Morris remained heavily invested in these efforts. A 1997 Philip Morris budget report includes a line item granting tassc $200,000. As executive director, Milloy also reached out to other allies within the industry. For instance, in September 1997, he sent a letter to Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation soliciting $50,000: “The grant will be used to further tassc’s efforts to educate the public, media and policymakers on priorities in public health,” he wrote.

The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition is now defunct. But one of Milloy’s nonprofits has the same acronym and a remarkably similar name: The Advancement of Sound Science Center. His Free Enterprise Action Institute also has tobacco links, with Thomas Borelli—a longtime Philip Morris executive—serving as its secretary.

It has become increasingly hard to defend tobacco or attack smoking studies, which is probably why Milloy’s more recent targets have included climate scientists like Mann. “Tobacco has lost most of these battles, but there is still opportunity to spread doubt about global warming,” says David Michaels, the chair of the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at George Washington University. Corporations with a stake in the global warming debate have been distributing their funds accordingly: Of the $3,056,783 raised in 2003 by the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (where Milloy is an unpaid adjunct analyst), $465,000 came from ExxonMobil. Milloy and Borelli’s latest enterprise is a mutual fund that seeks to counter pressure from environmental activists promoting corporate social responsibility.

Fox News can’t be expected to dig through the tobacco legacy documents every time one of its columnists writes about smoking issues. But, as far as Milloy, Fox News should be judged the same way tobacco companies were during their trials: What did they know, and when did they know it?

Fox News has certainly known since last spring that money from ExxonMobil was going to Milloy’s home-based charities. Perhaps the real reason the news organization tolerates Milloy is that his pro-industry, anti-environmentalist views dovetail nicely with those of its political commentators.

wikkipedia is as good as the person who wrote that particular page on it. You know this as well as I do. And your link goes to a intenet archive database.. From 2006 matter of fact.

Since you favor wikkipedia lets see what they say about The New Republic site your archived story is from...

The New Republic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Domestically, the current version of TNR supports a largely neo-liberal stance on fiscal and social issues. Recently departed editor Franklin Foer describes the magazine overall as such, stating that TNR "invented the modern usage of the term liberal, and it’s one of our historical legacies and obligations to be involved in the ongoing debate over what exactly liberalism means and stands for."

WOW, look at that... And just like I said wikkipedia's accuracy depends mostly on who wrote seeing as its community maintained... So do you agree with their take on your stories source or not? I do...

As I said liberal rags.... Now show me where it says in that liberal rag you cited, "Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death." Those were your words... How about the part where you claimed he denied smokings link to cancer? He disagreed with the studies linking second-hand smoke to an increased cancer rate... Now again lets try a little honesty here ...

 

[The Infidel]

Jeff Schweitzer: Warning: Drinking Tea Party Rhetoric May Cause Cancer

That the Grand Old Party is hostile to environmental regulation is no grand revelation. But the most recent assault on the EPA is, even for Republicans and Tea Party enthusiasts, an unusually reckless and irresponsible attack on reasonable attempts to clean our air. We are talking coal ash. Nothing like taking in some lead, cadmium and mercury with each breath and every sip of water to brighten one's day. That is just the price we must pay to reduce government interference into our private affairs.

But coal is particularly nasty. Yes, the attraction to coal is powerful and obvious because the United States sits on a reserve of nearly 250 billion tons of coal, 112 billion of which are high-quality bituminous and anthracite coals; the remainder mainly being lower-energy and dirtier lignite. With such abundance the siren song of energy independence is difficult to resist. However, burning even the highest quality anthracite is dirty business. One 500 MW power plant generates about 3 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. Other toxic byproducts include fine-grain particulates, heavy metals like mercury, lead, chromium and nickel, trace elements such as arsenic and selenium, and various organics like dichloroethane, benzene, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, and trichloroethylene. Oxides of nitrogen and sulfur are common pollutants from coal, and are found at higher levels in anthracite than in bituminous coal. The known health consequences of this toxic brew of air and water pollution are many, and include nervous system problems in infants and children, asthma, chronic bronchitis, lung cancer, a suite of cardiovascular problems and kidney disease. The environmental impacts are well documented, and not pretty.

But all of those inconvenient truths are just part of a liberal conspiracy if you believe the GOP.

And one wonders just why anybody believes anything the GOP has to say anymore. Talk about some nasty agendas.

CO2 is not a pollutant. Emissions of other substances from coal fired power plants are well below levels that could possibly be considered harmful. Mercury in the environment is almost entirely from natural sources. The latest jihad against mercury is just a backdoor attempt for Obama to implement is agenda to drive carbon fuels out of business.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTxGHn4sH4]Obama: My Plan Makes Electricity Rates Skyrocket - YouTube[/ame]

 

[The Infidel]

I check Huffington Post daily. To compare it to Rush Limbaugh or Hannity is ignorant. I'm willing to bet there is more criticism of President Obama based in FACT on the Huffington Post than Rush's emotional based right wing slander.

 

[Bfgrn]

Jeff Schweitzer: Warning: Drinking Tea Party Rhetoric May Cause Cancer



And one wonders just why anybody believes anything the GOP has to say anymore. Talk about some nasty agendas.

CO2 is not a pollutant. Emissions of other substances from coal fired power plants are well below levels that could possibly be considered harmful. Mercury in the environment is almost entirely from natural sources. The latest jihad against mercury is just a backdoor attempt for Obama to implement is agenda to drive carbon fuels out of business.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTxGHn4sH4]Obama: My Plan Makes Electricity Rates Skyrocket - YouTube[/ame]

IRONY ALERT:

President Obama and Democrats passed a health care bill. The biggest objection from the right? The Individual Mandate...A REPUBLICAN IDEA

Cap & Trade?..A REPUBLICAN IDEA


Remember, Cap-and-Trade Was Originally a Free-Market, Conservative Idea

Once upon a time, “cap-and-trade” wasn’t an object of conservative Republican opprobrium (e.g., as a “big government cap-and-tax scheme that will destroy our economy and end our way of life as we know it”). Actually, once up on a time, “cap-and-trade” was…wait for it…a conservative Republican idea! That’s right, let’s head to the “way back machine” and briefly review the Political History of Cap and Trade.

In the end, the conservative Republican-inspired “cap-and-trade” system for acid-rain-causing sulfur dioxide was put into place by Republican President George HW Bush, who “not only accepted the cap, he overruled his advisers’ recommendation of an eight million-ton cut in annual acid rain emissions in favor of the ten million-ton cut advocated by environmentalists.” And it worked incredibly well, “cost[ing] utilities just $3 billion annually, not $25 billion… [and] by cutting acid rain in half, it also generates an estimated $122 billion a year in benefits from avoided death and illness, healthier lakes and forests, and improved visibility on the Eastern Seaboard.”

The point of all this is simple. Cap-and-trade is not some dastardly scheme to destroy the U.S. economy. Cap-and-trade is not radical, either. In fact, cap-and-trade is a tried, true, tested and proven, market-based approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest possible cost. It worked with acid rain, far faster and cheaper than anyone predicted. Why would it be any different with carbon dioxide than sulfur dioxide? And why would Republicans oppose their own idea, after watching it produce one of the biggest environmental victories in U.S. history, on the gravest environmental threat facing our country and our planet? Even more, why would Republicans oppose an idea that — even if you put aside the issue of global warming — is still imperative – for urgent economic (e.g., sending $400 billion overseas every year to pay for imported oil) and national security (sending that $400 billion to a lot of countries that aren’t our friends, are building nuclear weapons programs, etc.) reasons?

It’s hard to think of any good reasons, how about some bad ones? Because, in the end, that’s about all the cap-and-trade naysayers have left.

 

[The Infidel]

CO2 is not a pollutant. Emissions of other substances from coal fired power plants are well below levels that could possibly be considered harmful. Mercury in the environment is almost entirely from natural sources. The latest jihad against mercury is just a backdoor attempt for Obama to implement is agenda to drive carbon fuels out of business.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTxGHn4sH4]Obama: My Plan Makes Electricity Rates Skyrocket - YouTube[/ame]

IRONY ALERT:

President Obama and Democrats passed a health care bill. The biggest objection from the right? The Individual Mandate...A REPUBLICAN IDEA

Cap & Trade?..A REPUBLICAN IDEA


Remember, Cap-and-Trade Was Originally a Free-Market, Conservative Idea

Once upon a time, “cap-and-trade” wasn’t an object of conservative Republican opprobrium (e.g., as a “big government cap-and-tax scheme that will destroy our economy and end our way of life as we know it”). Actually, once up on a time, “cap-and-trade” was…wait for it…a conservative Republican idea! That’s right, let’s head to the “way back machine” and briefly review the Political History of Cap and Trade.

In the end, the conservative Republican-inspired “cap-and-trade” system for acid-rain-causing sulfur dioxide was put into place by Republican President George HW Bush, who “not only accepted the cap, he overruled his advisers’ recommendation of an eight million-ton cut in annual acid rain emissions in favor of the ten million-ton cut advocated by environmentalists.” And it worked incredibly well, “cost[ing] utilities just $3 billion annually, not $25 billion… [and] by cutting acid rain in half, it also generates an estimated $122 billion a year in benefits from avoided death and illness, healthier lakes and forests, and improved visibility on the Eastern Seaboard.”

The point of all this is simple. Cap-and-trade is not some dastardly scheme to destroy the U.S. economy. Cap-and-trade is not radical, either. In fact, cap-and-trade is a tried, true, tested and proven, market-based approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest possible cost. It worked with acid rain, far faster and cheaper than anyone predicted. Why would it be any different with carbon dioxide than sulfur dioxide? And why would Republicans oppose their own idea, after watching it produce one of the biggest environmental victories in U.S. history, on the gravest environmental threat facing our country and our planet? Even more, why would Republicans oppose an idea that — even if you put aside the issue of global warming — is still imperative – for urgent economic (e.g., sending $400 billion overseas every year to pay for imported oil) and national security (sending that $400 billion to a lot of countries that aren’t our friends, are building nuclear weapons programs, etc.) reasons?

It’s hard to think of any good reasons, how about some bad ones? Because, in the end, that’s about all the cap-and-trade naysayers have left.

Stop blaming Repubix for what YOUR president did.


Oh, and go hold your breath.... your polluting the atmosphere with that nasty CO2 coming from your pie hole.

 

[Bfgrn]

wikkipedia... yeah my kids in high school aren't allowed to use wikkipedia as a source for any reports... I guess they are to apt to be based on OPINION rather than fact these days. Kind of depends on who writes them..

I checked the link you gave after the fact and noticed one glaring thing... Where is the proof in any of it? All I saw was links to left wing rags for references. I suppose I could do the same thing with Mann couldn't I... yeah I could, especially if I use a wikki article with opinion pieces and op-eds for reference....

AND BTW , he argues that the studies regarding second hand smoke causing cancer are dubious. NOT QUITE what you were claiming huh... Funny...

Try a little honesty next time bfgrn, don't exaggerate the claims just tel what they say as it is... That way we are less likely to dismiss your BS off-hand. But then exaggerated claims are what you greenpeace posters are all about anyway..

IRONY ALERT:

You dismiss wikkipedia (Wikipedia) then you cite it...make up your tiny little mind...

Let's delve into one of those 'left wing rags for references'

PUNDIT FOR HIRE.
Smoked Out
by Paul D. Thacker

Milloy has been affiliated with FoxNews.com since July 2000. On March 9, 2001, he wrote a column for the website headlined “secondhand smokescreen.” The piece attacked a study by researcher Stephen Hecht, who found that women living with smokers had higher levels of chemicals associated with risk of lung cancer. “If spin were science, Hecht would win a Nobel Prize,” Milloy wrote. For good measure, he heaped scorn on a 1993 Environmental Protection Agency report that also linked health risks and secondhand smoke.

Later that spring, he authored another smoking-related piece for FoxNews.com. In that one, he cast aside two decades of research on the dangers of exposure to secondhand smoke and concluded, “Secondhand smoke is annoying to many nonsmokers. That is the essence of the controversy and where the debate should lie—the rights of smokers to smoke in public places versus the rights of nonsmokers to be free of tobacco smoke.” You might chalk it up to Milloy’s contrarian nature. Or to his libertarian tendencies.

Except, all the while, he was on the payroll of big tobacco. According to Lisa Gonzalez, manager of external communications for Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, Milloy was under contract there through the end of last year. “In 2000 and 2001, some of the work he did was to monitor studies, and then we would distribute this information within to our different companies,” Gonzalez said. Although she couldn’t comment on fees paid to Milloy, a January 2001 Philip Morris budget report lists Milloy as a consultant and shows that he was budgeted for $92,500 in fees and expenses in both 2000 and 2001. Asked about Milloy’s tobacco ties, Paul Schur, director of media relations for Fox News, said, “Fox News was unaware of Milloy’s connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed.” Milloy could not be reached for comment.

Yet it’s all in the public record. The University of California at San Francisco maintains a database of seven million tobacco industry documents made public as part of the 1998 settlement between tobacco companies and state attorneys general. According to those documents, Milloy’s relationship to big tobacco goes back at least to March 1997, when he took over as executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (tassc), a front group established in 1993 by Philip Morris and p.r. firm apco Associates “to expand and assist Philip Morris in its efforts with issues in targeted states.” (Fumento was on the organization’s advisory board.)

Under Milloy, tassc sought to debunk a range of scientific theories that ran counter to the conservative viewpoint, from the dangers of breast implants to the need for stricter clean air standards. Philip Morris remained heavily invested in these efforts. A 1997 Philip Morris budget report includes a line item granting tassc $200,000. As executive director, Milloy also reached out to other allies within the industry. For instance, in September 1997, he sent a letter to Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation soliciting $50,000: “The grant will be used to further tassc’s efforts to educate the public, media and policymakers on priorities in public health,” he wrote.

The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition is now defunct. But one of Milloy’s nonprofits has the same acronym and a remarkably similar name: The Advancement of Sound Science Center. His Free Enterprise Action Institute also has tobacco links, with Thomas Borelli—a longtime Philip Morris executive—serving as its secretary.

It has become increasingly hard to defend tobacco or attack smoking studies, which is probably why Milloy’s more recent targets have included climate scientists like Mann. “Tobacco has lost most of these battles, but there is still opportunity to spread doubt about global warming,” says David Michaels, the chair of the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at George Washington University. Corporations with a stake in the global warming debate have been distributing their funds accordingly: Of the $3,056,783 raised in 2003 by the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (where Milloy is an unpaid adjunct analyst), $465,000 came from ExxonMobil. Milloy and Borelli’s latest enterprise is a mutual fund that seeks to counter pressure from environmental activists promoting corporate social responsibility.

Fox News can’t be expected to dig through the tobacco legacy documents every time one of its columnists writes about smoking issues. But, as far as Milloy, Fox News should be judged the same way tobacco companies were during their trials: What did they know, and when did they know it?

Fox News has certainly known since last spring that money from ExxonMobil was going to Milloy’s home-based charities. Perhaps the real reason the news organization tolerates Milloy is that his pro-industry, anti-environmentalist views dovetail nicely with those of its political commentators.

wikkipedia is as good as the person who wrote that particular page on it. You know this as well as I do. And your link goes to a intenet archive database.. From 2006 matter of fact.

Since you favor wikkipedia lets see what they say about The New Republic site your archived story is from...

The New Republic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Domestically, the current version of TNR supports a largely neo-liberal stance on fiscal and social issues. Recently departed editor Franklin Foer describes the magazine overall as such, stating that TNR "invented the modern usage of the term liberal, and it’s one of our historical legacies and obligations to be involved in the ongoing debate over what exactly liberalism means and stands for."

WOW, look at that... And just like I said wikkipedia's accuracy depends mostly on who wrote seeing as its community maintained... So do you agree with their take on your stories source or not? I do...

As I said liberal rags.... Now show me where it says in that liberal rag you cited, "Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death." Those were your words... How about the part where you claimed he denied smokings link to cancer? He disagreed with the studies linking second-hand smoke to an increased cancer rate... Now again lets try a little honesty here ...

"Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death."

Legacy Tobacco Documents Library

Steven Milloy, author of JunkScience.com, also criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for claiming that 400,000 people die every year from alleged smoking-related illnesses, saying that studies linking smoking to heart disease are not entirely reliable. He pointed out that smokers have higher heart disease rates than non-smokers partly because smokers also tend to be people who do not exercise, have worse diets, avoid doctors and have less healthy lifestyles overall. (CNS News 8/1)



Steve Milloy denies coal plant pollution kills people


MILLOY: Show us the bodies, EPA

Green agency uses phony death statistics to justify job-killing rules

To paraphrase cinematic sports agent Jerry McGuire, “Show me the bodies.”

While that may sound harsh, given that the EPA is about to kill hundreds of thousands of jobs and cost our crippled economy countless billions of dollars, Republicans must demand some sort of proof that the alleged harms are indeed happening.

The EPA says air pollution kills tens of thousands of people annually. This is on a par with traffic accident fatalities. While we can identify traffic accident victims, air pollution victims are unknown, unidentified and as far as anyone can tell, figments of EPA’s statistical imagination.

May 10, 2011
The Honorable Joe Barton
Chairman Emeritus
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative Barton:
As doctors and on behalf of the organizations we represent, we write today to provide you with information regarding the wealth of peer-reviewed research that establishes a clear link between air pollution and a range of serious adverse human health effects.

During the Energy and Power subcommittee hearing on April 15th you expressed pollution, in particular mercury and particulate matter, does not cause health impacts. Further, you stated that that there was no science to back up the health benefits that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) expects to achieve as air toxics from power plants are reduced and that the impacted by lung, cardiovascular and neurological impairments, we were shocked at such statements.

We are doctors and we see in the patients we treat what that the scientific literature lets us know to expect: that air pollution makes people sick and cuts lives short.

The health impacts of short-term exposure (over hours to days) of particulate matter were found to include: death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes, including strokes; increased risk of cardiovascular harm, including acute myocardial infarction (heart attacks) and congestive heart failure, especially among the elderly and in people with cardiovascular disease; inflammation of lung tissue in young, healthy adults; increased hospitalization for cardiovascular disease, including strokes; hospitalization for asthma among children; and aggravated asthma attacks in children.

Exposure to year-round particle pollution has also been found to cause premature death and cardiovascular harm, especially greater risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

Particulate matter is considered likely to increase the risk of hospitalization for asthma attacks in children; stunt lung function growth in children and teenagers; damage the small airways of the lungs; increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes in older women; increased risk of dying from lung cancer; and. Evidence links long-term exposures to adverse reproductive and developmental outcomes such as low birth weight and
infant mortality.

During the hearing, you also stipulated that mercury is a poison and pollutant, a statement with which we concur. Given this, we fail to understand your subsequent statement that mercury does not pose a health threat. Mercury and other air toxics have serious health effects that compel EPA to act. Some toxic air pollutants, such as lead, mercury, and dioxins degrade slowly or not at all. These pollutants bioaccumulate in humans and other animals at the top of the food chain. Children can be exposed to toxic air pollutants through contaminated air, water, soil, and food.

Mercury is one example of a persistent pollutant emitted into ambient air that leads to exposure through another route: organisms metabolized mercury into methylmercury, a developmental neurotoxicant that poses a significant hazard for children. The developing fetus and young children are thought to be disproportionately affected by methylmercury exposure, because many aspects of development, particularly brain maturation, can be disturbed by the presence of methylmercury. Minimizing mercury exposure is, therefore, essential to optimal child health.

Industrial emissions, especially from coal-fired power plants, are the leading source of environmental mercury. Although the levels of ambient mercury may not be hazardous, mercury deposits into soil and surface waters and ultimately accumulates in fish. Because fish may contain large amounts of mercury, children and pregnant women can have significant exposure if they consume excessive amounts of fish.

...

Sincerely,

O. Marion Burton, MD, FAAP
President
American Academy of Pediatrics

Albert A. Rizzo, MD
Chair-elect
American Lung Association

Georges C. Benjamin, MD, FACP, FACEP (E)
Executive Director
American Public Health Association

Dean E. Schraufnagel, MD
President
American Thoracic Society

Bill McLin, M Ed.
President and CEO
Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America

Peter Wilk, MD
Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility

 

[Dot Com]

bad-mouthing pollutants in un- American according to rightards/t-partiers.

 

[Bfgrn]

Obama: My Plan Makes Electricity Rates Skyrocket - YouTube

IRONY ALERT:

President Obama and Democrats passed a health care bill. The biggest objection from the right? The Individual Mandate...A REPUBLICAN IDEA

Cap & Trade?..A REPUBLICAN IDEA


Remember, Cap-and-Trade Was Originally a Free-Market, Conservative Idea

Once upon a time, “cap-and-trade” wasn’t an object of conservative Republican opprobrium (e.g., as a “big government cap-and-tax scheme that will destroy our economy and end our way of life as we know it&#8221. Actually, once up on a time, “cap-and-trade” was…wait for it…a conservative Republican idea! That’s right, let’s head to the “way back machine” and briefly review the Political History of Cap and Trade.

In the end, the conservative Republican-inspired “cap-and-trade” system for acid-rain-causing sulfur dioxide was put into place by Republican President George HW Bush, who “not only accepted the cap, he overruled his advisers’ recommendation of an eight million-ton cut in annual acid rain emissions in favor of the ten million-ton cut advocated by environmentalists.” And it worked incredibly well, “cost[ing] utilities just $3 billion annually, not $25 billion… [and] by cutting acid rain in half, it also generates an estimated $122 billion a year in benefits from avoided death and illness, healthier lakes and forests, and improved visibility on the Eastern Seaboard.”

The point of all this is simple. Cap-and-trade is not some dastardly scheme to destroy the U.S. economy. Cap-and-trade is not radical, either. In fact, cap-and-trade is a tried, true, tested and proven, market-based approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest possible cost. It worked with acid rain, far faster and cheaper than anyone predicted. Why would it be any different with carbon dioxide than sulfur dioxide? And why would Republicans oppose their own idea, after watching it produce one of the biggest environmental victories in U.S. history, on the gravest environmental threat facing our country and our planet? Even more, why would Republicans oppose an idea that — even if you put aside the issue of global warming — is still imperative – for urgent economic (e.g., sending $400 billion overseas every year to pay for imported oil) and national security (sending that $400 billion to a lot of countries that aren’t our friends, are building nuclear weapons programs, etc.) reasons?

It’s hard to think of any good reasons, how about some bad ones? Because, in the end, that’s about all the cap-and-trade naysayers have left.

Stop blaming Repubix for what YOUR president did.


Oh, and go hold your breath.... your polluting the atmosphere with that nasty CO2 coming from your pie hole.

He is OUR President, just like Bush was OUR President. And OUR President didn't sign a Cap & Trade Bill.

Cap and trade was first tried on a significant scale 20 years ago under the first Bush administration as a way to address the problem of airborne sulfur dioxide pollution — widely known as acid rain

 

[BDBoop]

I think everybody should have to study the history of the EPA and why it exists before they can go trying to kick it out of existence.

Love Canal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[bripat9643]

Ignore whatever suits your ignorant dogma. If you actually look at the grants being given to the ALA, they are spent on remedial actions and public education required because of diseases exacerbated by pollution.

You're the one spouting ignorant dogma. Rather, you are spouting propaganda bought and paid for by power hungry EPA bureaucrats who want to micro-manage our entire economy.

Instead, you choose to spew the paid for propaganda from JunkScience.com.

Buddy, you just got caught spewing propaganda paid for by the EPA! Here's a clue for you: I never mentioned JunkScience.com or Steven Milloy, dipstick.

IRONY ALERT: YOU said the correlation between smoking and cancer is well established. Steven J. Milloy who runs JunkScience.com disagrees! Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death.

He disputes the notion that there is any health risk from second hand smoke. He's right, there is no correlation whatsoever. There is really no way to even know how much a person is exposed to 2nd hand smoke.

Steven J. Milloy is a columnist for Fox News and a paid advocate for Phillip Morris, ExxonMobil and other corporations.

And the EPA has paid the AMLA $20 million over the last 10 years. Despite your sleazy weaseling about that indisputable fact. Here is the rule with drones like you: leftwing groups gets money from the government - good, they are noble warriors for good. Right wing group gets money from private industry - bad, they are sinister malefactors in league with the devil.

Milloy's junkscience.com website was reviewed and revised by a public relations firm hired by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Milloy also worked as executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), which was established in 1993 by Philip Morris and its public relations firm "to expand and assist Philip Morris in its efforts with issues in targeted states." A 1994 Philip Morris memo listed TASSC among its "Tools to Affect Legislative Decisions". According to its 1997 annual report, TASSC "sponsored" junkscience.com.

The New Republic reported that Milloy, who is presented by Fox News as an independent journalist, was under contract to provide consulting services to Philip Morris through the end of 2005. In 2000 and 2001, for example, Milloy received a total of $180,000 in payments from Philip Morris for consulting services. A spokesperson for Fox News stated, "Fox News was unaware of Milloy's connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed." wiki

Since I haven't mentioned Steven Milloy, that's totally irreverent. Furthermore, you don't judge the truth of a statement by the source. Statements are logically judged to be true or false on their own merits. Only demagogues rely on ad hominem arguments like the kind you're so fond of.

I keep hearing conservatives argue they are for protecting our environment, just like liberals. Yet, turd brains like you deny pollution, know toxins and carcinogens are a hazard to human health.

They are for protecting the environment within reason, not if the sky is the limit on cost. Every government policy has trade offs. Wackaloon environmentalists like you behave as if there is no downside to their oppressive regulations. Regulations that don't save a single life but drive up the cost of electricity by hundreds of billions of dollars are not a benefit to the consumers of this country.

Ironic, the Soviet Union is a environmental waste land and a nuclear contamination time bomb that threatens the world. Russia had their Marxists, and we have our Marketists. Two peas in a pod who will take us to the SAME ends.

Ironically, the Soviet Union ran the economy exactly the way you want to run it. The claim that the free market is no different than socialism is the ultimate idiocy. The fact that you spout it marks you as an economic ignoramus.

Just as the negative effects of a high fever do not certify the health benefits of the opposite extreme, hypothermia, the dismal failure of communism, seeking complete government control of the economy, does not certify the economic benefits of the opposite extreme, total economic non-intervention.

Unfortunately, to control of the economy is exactly what turds like you are after. Communism is the direction you and your ilk are pushing this country.

The bottom line is that coal is cheap reliable source of electricity. there is no evidence that anyone ever suffered an illness from the emissions of a coal fired power plant. Furthermore, the cheap power coal provides makes possible many life saving medical miracles. It also makes possible things like refrigeration, lighting, television computers, air conditioning. Quite recently 10,000 died in France during a heat wave from the lack if air-conditioning. Right there alone is an example of more deaths than pollution has ever caused in the history of the industrial revolution. Does anyone really believe that the sun and the wind can provide enough power to keep conditioning online for 300 million people?

 

[bripat9643]

IRONY ALERT:

President Obama and Democrats passed a health care bill. The biggest objection from the right? The Individual Mandate...A REPUBLICAN IDEA

That isn't the biggest objection. It's simply the objection that has a legal basis and will get it declared unconstitutional The individual mandate is a Mitt Romney idea. The entire Republican Party isn't responsible for the ideas of one of it's members.

Cap & Trade?..A REPUBLICAN IDEA



Remember, Cap-and-Trade Was Originally a Free-Market, Conservative IdeaOnce upon a time, “cap-and-trade” wasn’t an object of conservative Republican opprobrium (e.g., as a “big government cap-and-tax scheme that will destroy our economy and end our way of life as we know it&#8221. Actually, once up on a time, “cap-and-trade” was…wait for it…a conservative Republican idea! That’s right, let’s head to the “way back machine” and briefly review the Political History of Cap and Trade.

In the end, the conservative Republican-inspired “cap-and-trade” system for acid-rain-causing sulfur dioxide was put into place by Republican President George HW Bush, who “not only accepted the cap, he overruled his advisers’ recommendation of an eight million-ton cut in annual acid rain emissions in favor of the ten million-ton cut advocated by environmentalists.” And it worked incredibly well, “cost[ing] utilities just $3 billion annually, not $25 billion… [and] by cutting acid rain in half, it also generates an estimated $122 billion a year in benefits from avoided death and illness, healthier lakes and forests, and improved visibility on the Eastern Seaboard.”

Gasoline works great in your car. That doesn't make it good for drinking. Cap and trade works for pollutants that are technically easy to control. CO2 isn't a pollutant and you can't use carbon based fuels without creating C02. Controlling CO2, no matter what method is used, means abandoning our cheapest, most portable, most dense and most powerful source of energy. It would make just as much sense to use Cap and Trade to limit the amount of urine humans produce. No amount of incentive is going to make much of a change there.

The point of all this is simple. Cap-and-trade is not some dastardly scheme to destroy the U.S. economy.

Actually, that's exactly what it is. Either that, or environmentalists are all morons. My theory is that both claims are true. CO2 cannot be controlled like Sulfur Dioxide. Anyone who believes the two are comparable is a dolt.

Cap-and-trade is not radical, either. In fact, cap-and-trade is a tried, true, tested and proven, market-based approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest possible cost. It worked with acid rain, far faster and cheaper than anyone predicted. Why would it be any different with carbon dioxide than sulfur dioxide?

As I already explain, CO2 is the end result of the combustion process. Eliminating CO2 means eliminating combustion. That means eliminating the use of carbon fuels, our cheapest and best source of energy by several orders of magnitude.

And why would Republicans oppose their own idea, after watching it produce one of the biggest environmental victories in U.S. history, on the gravest environmental threat facing our country and our planet?

There is no threat. The theory of man-made global warming is a huge con.

Even more, why would Republicans oppose an idea that — even if you put aside the issue of global warming — is still imperative – for urgent economic (e.g., sending $400 billion overseas every year to pay for imported oil) and national security (sending that $400 billion to a lot of countries that aren’t our friends, are building nuclear weapons programs, etc.) reasons?

Because that amount is far cheaper than the schemes of the warmist nutburgers.

It’s hard to think

We see that about you.

 

[gslack]

IRONY ALERT:

You dismiss wikkipedia (Wikipedia) then you cite it...make up your tiny little mind...

Let's delve into one of those 'left wing rags for references'

PUNDIT FOR HIRE.
Smoked Out
by Paul D. Thacker

Milloy has been affiliated with FoxNews.com since July 2000. On March 9, 2001, he wrote a column for the website headlined “secondhand smokescreen.” The piece attacked a study by researcher Stephen Hecht, who found that women living with smokers had higher levels of chemicals associated with risk of lung cancer. “If spin were science, Hecht would win a Nobel Prize,” Milloy wrote. For good measure, he heaped scorn on a 1993 Environmental Protection Agency report that also linked health risks and secondhand smoke.

Later that spring, he authored another smoking-related piece for FoxNews.com. In that one, he cast aside two decades of research on the dangers of exposure to secondhand smoke and concluded, “Secondhand smoke is annoying to many nonsmokers. That is the essence of the controversy and where the debate should lie—the rights of smokers to smoke in public places versus the rights of nonsmokers to be free of tobacco smoke.” You might chalk it up to Milloy’s contrarian nature. Or to his libertarian tendencies.

Except, all the while, he was on the payroll of big tobacco. According to Lisa Gonzalez, manager of external communications for Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, Milloy was under contract there through the end of last year. “In 2000 and 2001, some of the work he did was to monitor studies, and then we would distribute this information within to our different companies,” Gonzalez said. Although she couldn’t comment on fees paid to Milloy, a January 2001 Philip Morris budget report lists Milloy as a consultant and shows that he was budgeted for $92,500 in fees and expenses in both 2000 and 2001. Asked about Milloy’s tobacco ties, Paul Schur, director of media relations for Fox News, said, “Fox News was unaware of Milloy’s connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed.” Milloy could not be reached for comment.

Yet it’s all in the public record. The University of California at San Francisco maintains a database of seven million tobacco industry documents made public as part of the 1998 settlement between tobacco companies and state attorneys general. According to those documents, Milloy’s relationship to big tobacco goes back at least to March 1997, when he took over as executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (tassc), a front group established in 1993 by Philip Morris and p.r. firm apco Associates “to expand and assist Philip Morris in its efforts with issues in targeted states.” (Fumento was on the organization’s advisory board.)

Under Milloy, tassc sought to debunk a range of scientific theories that ran counter to the conservative viewpoint, from the dangers of breast implants to the need for stricter clean air standards. Philip Morris remained heavily invested in these efforts. A 1997 Philip Morris budget report includes a line item granting tassc $200,000. As executive director, Milloy also reached out to other allies within the industry. For instance, in September 1997, he sent a letter to Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation soliciting $50,000: “The grant will be used to further tassc’s efforts to educate the public, media and policymakers on priorities in public health,” he wrote.

The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition is now defunct. But one of Milloy’s nonprofits has the same acronym and a remarkably similar name: The Advancement of Sound Science Center. His Free Enterprise Action Institute also has tobacco links, with Thomas Borelli—a longtime Philip Morris executive—serving as its secretary.

It has become increasingly hard to defend tobacco or attack smoking studies, which is probably why Milloy’s more recent targets have included climate scientists like Mann. “Tobacco has lost most of these battles, but there is still opportunity to spread doubt about global warming,” says David Michaels, the chair of the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at George Washington University. Corporations with a stake in the global warming debate have been distributing their funds accordingly: Of the $3,056,783 raised in 2003 by the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (where Milloy is an unpaid adjunct analyst), $465,000 came from ExxonMobil. Milloy and Borelli’s latest enterprise is a mutual fund that seeks to counter pressure from environmental activists promoting corporate social responsibility.

Fox News can’t be expected to dig through the tobacco legacy documents every time one of its columnists writes about smoking issues. But, as far as Milloy, Fox News should be judged the same way tobacco companies were during their trials: What did they know, and when did they know it?

Fox News has certainly known since last spring that money from ExxonMobil was going to Milloy’s home-based charities. Perhaps the real reason the news organization tolerates Milloy is that his pro-industry, anti-environmentalist views dovetail nicely with those of its political commentators.

wikkipedia is as good as the person who wrote that particular page on it. You know this as well as I do. And your link goes to a intenet archive database.. From 2006 matter of fact.

Since you favor wikkipedia lets see what they say about The New Republic site your archived story is from...

The New Republic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Domestically, the current version of TNR supports a largely neo-liberal stance on fiscal and social issues. Recently departed editor Franklin Foer describes the magazine overall as such, stating that TNR "invented the modern usage of the term liberal, and it’s one of our historical legacies and obligations to be involved in the ongoing debate over what exactly liberalism means and stands for."

WOW, look at that... And just like I said wikkipedia's accuracy depends mostly on who wrote seeing as its community maintained... So do you agree with their take on your stories source or not? I do...

As I said liberal rags.... Now show me where it says in that liberal rag you cited, "Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death." Those were your words... How about the part where you claimed he denied smokings link to cancer? He disagreed with the studies linking second-hand smoke to an increased cancer rate... Now again lets try a little honesty here ...

"Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death."

Legacy Tobacco Documents Library

Steven Milloy, author of JunkScience.com, also criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for claiming that 400,000 people die every year from alleged smoking-related illnesses, saying that studies linking smoking to heart disease are not entirely reliable. He pointed out that smokers have higher heart disease rates than non-smokers partly because smokers also tend to be people who do not exercise, have worse diets, avoid doctors and have less healthy lifestyles overall. (CNS News 8/1)



Steve Milloy denies coal plant pollution kills people


MILLOY: Show us the bodies, EPA

Green agency uses phony death statistics to justify job-killing rules

To paraphrase cinematic sports agent Jerry McGuire, “Show me the bodies.”

While that may sound harsh, given that the EPA is about to kill hundreds of thousands of jobs and cost our crippled economy countless billions of dollars, Republicans must demand some sort of proof that the alleged harms are indeed happening.

The EPA says air pollution kills tens of thousands of people annually. This is on a par with traffic accident fatalities. While we can identify traffic accident victims, air pollution victims are unknown, unidentified and as far as anyone can tell, figments of EPA’s statistical imagination.

May 10, 2011
The Honorable Joe Barton
Chairman Emeritus
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative Barton:
As doctors and on behalf of the organizations we represent, we write today to provide you with information regarding the wealth of peer-reviewed research that establishes a clear link between air pollution and a range of serious adverse human health effects.

During the Energy and Power subcommittee hearing on April 15th you expressed pollution, in particular mercury and particulate matter, does not cause health impacts. Further, you stated that that there was no science to back up the health benefits that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) expects to achieve as air toxics from power plants are reduced and that the impacted by lung, cardiovascular and neurological impairments, we were shocked at such statements.

We are doctors and we see in the patients we treat what that the scientific literature lets us know to expect: that air pollution makes people sick and cuts lives short.

The health impacts of short-term exposure (over hours to days) of particulate matter were found to include: death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes, including strokes; increased risk of cardiovascular harm, including acute myocardial infarction (heart attacks) and congestive heart failure, especially among the elderly and in people with cardiovascular disease; inflammation of lung tissue in young, healthy adults; increased hospitalization for cardiovascular disease, including strokes; hospitalization for asthma among children; and aggravated asthma attacks in children.

Exposure to year-round particle pollution has also been found to cause premature death and cardiovascular harm, especially greater risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

Particulate matter is considered likely to increase the risk of hospitalization for asthma attacks in children; stunt lung function growth in children and teenagers; damage the small airways of the lungs; increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes in older women; increased risk of dying from lung cancer; and. Evidence links long-term exposures to adverse reproductive and developmental outcomes such as low birth weight and
infant mortality.

During the hearing, you also stipulated that mercury is a poison and pollutant, a statement with which we concur. Given this, we fail to understand your subsequent statement that mercury does not pose a health threat. Mercury and other air toxics have serious health effects that compel EPA to act. Some toxic air pollutants, such as lead, mercury, and dioxins degrade slowly or not at all. These pollutants bioaccumulate in humans and other animals at the top of the food chain. Children can be exposed to toxic air pollutants through contaminated air, water, soil, and food.

Mercury is one example of a persistent pollutant emitted into ambient air that leads to exposure through another route: organisms metabolized mercury into methylmercury, a developmental neurotoxicant that poses a significant hazard for children. The developing fetus and young children are thought to be disproportionately affected by methylmercury exposure, because many aspects of development, particularly brain maturation, can be disturbed by the presence of methylmercury. Minimizing mercury exposure is, therefore, essential to optimal child health.

Industrial emissions, especially from coal-fired power plants, are the leading source of environmental mercury. Although the levels of ambient mercury may not be hazardous, mercury deposits into soil and surface waters and ultimately accumulates in fish. Because fish may contain large amounts of mercury, children and pregnant women can have significant exposure if they consume excessive amounts of fish.

...

Sincerely,

O. Marion Burton, MD, FAAP
President
American Academy of Pediatrics

Albert A. Rizzo, MD
Chair-elect
American Lung Association

Georges C. Benjamin, MD, FACP, FACEP (E)
Executive Director
American Public Health Association

Dean E. Schraufnagel, MD
President
American Thoracic Society

Bill McLin, M Ed.
President and CEO
Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America

Peter Wilk, MD
Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility

Your first links doesn't go to anything related to Malloy.... Got an explanation for that? LIE 1

you second link, goes to an OP-ed he did for the Washington post where he disagrees with the EPA's new bill... It says nothing like what you claimed it did. LIE 2

Your third link, is to a letter to a representative from some doctors with the american lung association and other groups.... Nothing from Malloy... LIE 3


Tell ya what, from now on don't say "irony alert".. Say "Bullshit coming" its a lot more accurate...

So you can't produce anything that shows any of the claims you made earlier, and now you can't even show any evidence to back your latest round of exaggerated propaganda....

 

[Bfgrn]

wikkipedia is as good as the person who wrote that particular page on it. You know this as well as I do. And your link goes to a intenet archive database.. From 2006 matter of fact.

Since you favor wikkipedia lets see what they say about The New Republic site your archived story is from...

The New Republic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



WOW, look at that... And just like I said wikkipedia's accuracy depends mostly on who wrote seeing as its community maintained... So do you agree with their take on your stories source or not? I do...

As I said liberal rags.... Now show me where it says in that liberal rag you cited, "Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death." Those were your words... How about the part where you claimed he denied smokings link to cancer? He disagreed with the studies linking second-hand smoke to an increased cancer rate... Now again lets try a little honesty here ...

"Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death."

Legacy Tobacco Documents Library

Steven Milloy, author of JunkScience.com, also criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for claiming that 400,000 people die every year from alleged smoking-related illnesses, saying that studies linking smoking to heart disease are not entirely reliable. He pointed out that smokers have higher heart disease rates than non-smokers partly because smokers also tend to be people who do not exercise, have worse diets, avoid doctors and have less healthy lifestyles overall. (CNS News 8/1)



Steve Milloy denies coal plant pollution kills people


MILLOY: Show us the bodies, EPA

Green agency uses phony death statistics to justify job-killing rules

To paraphrase cinematic sports agent Jerry McGuire, “Show me the bodies.”

While that may sound harsh, given that the EPA is about to kill hundreds of thousands of jobs and cost our crippled economy countless billions of dollars, Republicans must demand some sort of proof that the alleged harms are indeed happening.

The EPA says air pollution kills tens of thousands of people annually. This is on a par with traffic accident fatalities. While we can identify traffic accident victims, air pollution victims are unknown, unidentified and as far as anyone can tell, figments of EPA’s statistical imagination.

May 10, 2011
The Honorable Joe Barton
Chairman Emeritus
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative Barton:
As doctors and on behalf of the organizations we represent, we write today to provide you with information regarding the wealth of peer-reviewed research that establishes a clear link between air pollution and a range of serious adverse human health effects.

During the Energy and Power subcommittee hearing on April 15th you expressed pollution, in particular mercury and particulate matter, does not cause health impacts. Further, you stated that that there was no science to back up the health benefits that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) expects to achieve as air toxics from power plants are reduced and that the impacted by lung, cardiovascular and neurological impairments, we were shocked at such statements.

We are doctors and we see in the patients we treat what that the scientific literature lets us know to expect: that air pollution makes people sick and cuts lives short.

The health impacts of short-term exposure (over hours to days) of particulate matter were found to include: death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes, including strokes; increased risk of cardiovascular harm, including acute myocardial infarction (heart attacks) and congestive heart failure, especially among the elderly and in people with cardiovascular disease; inflammation of lung tissue in young, healthy adults; increased hospitalization for cardiovascular disease, including strokes; hospitalization for asthma among children; and aggravated asthma attacks in children.

Exposure to year-round particle pollution has also been found to cause premature death and cardiovascular harm, especially greater risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

Particulate matter is considered likely to increase the risk of hospitalization for asthma attacks in children; stunt lung function growth in children and teenagers; damage the small airways of the lungs; increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes in older women; increased risk of dying from lung cancer; and. Evidence links long-term exposures to adverse reproductive and developmental outcomes such as low birth weight and
infant mortality.

During the hearing, you also stipulated that mercury is a poison and pollutant, a statement with which we concur. Given this, we fail to understand your subsequent statement that mercury does not pose a health threat. Mercury and other air toxics have serious health effects that compel EPA to act. Some toxic air pollutants, such as lead, mercury, and dioxins degrade slowly or not at all. These pollutants bioaccumulate in humans and other animals at the top of the food chain. Children can be exposed to toxic air pollutants through contaminated air, water, soil, and food.

Mercury is one example of a persistent pollutant emitted into ambient air that leads to exposure through another route: organisms metabolized mercury into methylmercury, a developmental neurotoxicant that poses a significant hazard for children. The developing fetus and young children are thought to be disproportionately affected by methylmercury exposure, because many aspects of development, particularly brain maturation, can be disturbed by the presence of methylmercury. Minimizing mercury exposure is, therefore, essential to optimal child health.

Industrial emissions, especially from coal-fired power plants, are the leading source of environmental mercury. Although the levels of ambient mercury may not be hazardous, mercury deposits into soil and surface waters and ultimately accumulates in fish. Because fish may contain large amounts of mercury, children and pregnant women can have significant exposure if they consume excessive amounts of fish.

...

Sincerely,

O. Marion Burton, MD, FAAP
President
American Academy of Pediatrics

Albert A. Rizzo, MD
Chair-elect
American Lung Association

Georges C. Benjamin, MD, FACP, FACEP (E)
Executive Director
American Public Health Association

Dean E. Schraufnagel, MD
President
American Thoracic Society

Bill McLin, M Ed.
President and CEO
Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America

Peter Wilk, MD
Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility

Your first links doesn't go to anything related to Malloy.... Got an explanation for that? LIE 1

you second link, goes to an OP-ed he did for the Washington post where he disagrees with the EPA's new bill... It says nothing like what you claimed it did. LIE 2

Your third link, is to a letter to a representative from some doctors with the american lung association and other groups.... Nothing from Malloy... LIE 3


Tell ya what, from now on don't say "irony alert".. Say "Bullshit coming" its a lot more accurate...

So you can't produce anything that shows any of the claims you made earlier, and now you can't even show any evidence to back your latest round of exaggerated propaganda....

There are no lies. Maybe you just need help deciphering what Milloy said and MEANS. If you are looking for exact words that match my claim, that is deceitful and typical of you right wingers...I call it word bound.

1) Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death.

The first link goes to exactly what I said it did. A 2003 "Tobacco Weekly" newsletter. Go to the last article on the page. (Washington DC Oral Pathologist...)

Steven Milloy, author of JunkScience.com, also criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for claiming that 400,000 people die every year from alleged smoking-related illnesses, saying that studies linking smoking to heart disease are not entirely reliable. He pointed out that smokers have higher heart disease rates than non-smokers partly because smokers also tend to be people who do not exercise, have worse diets, avoid doctors and have less healthy lifestyles overall. (CNS News 8/1)
# 1 accusation debunked.



2) Steve Milloy denies coal plant pollution kills people.

Milloy SAYS in the op-ed he wrote:
"Show me the bodies. While that may sound harsh, given that the EPA is about to kill hundreds of thousands of jobs and cost our crippled economy countless billions of dollars, Republicans must demand some sort of proof that the alleged harms are indeed happening...air pollution victims are unknown, unidentified and as far as anyone can tell, figments of EPA’s statistical imagination."
# 2 accusation debunked.



3) Milloy is WRONG. Coal plant pollution DOES kill people. According to numerous studies and the presidents and/or chairmans of:

American Academy of Pediatrics

American Lung Association

American Public Health Association

American Thoracic Society

Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America

Physicians for Social Responsibility
# 3 accusation debunked.



4) apology from you is in order...

 

[California Girl]

Jeff Schweitzer: Warning: Drinking Tea Party Rhetoric May Cause Cancer

That the Grand Old Party is hostile to environmental regulation is no grand revelation. But the most recent assault on the EPA is, even for Republicans and Tea Party enthusiasts, an unusually reckless and irresponsible attack on reasonable attempts to clean our air. We are talking coal ash. Nothing like taking in some lead, cadmium and mercury with each breath and every sip of water to brighten one's day. That is just the price we must pay to reduce government interference into our private affairs.

But coal is particularly nasty. Yes, the attraction to coal is powerful and obvious because the United States sits on a reserve of nearly 250 billion tons of coal, 112 billion of which are high-quality bituminous and anthracite coals; the remainder mainly being lower-energy and dirtier lignite. With such abundance the siren song of energy independence is difficult to resist. However, burning even the highest quality anthracite is dirty business. One 500 MW power plant generates about 3 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. Other toxic byproducts include fine-grain particulates, heavy metals like mercury, lead, chromium and nickel, trace elements such as arsenic and selenium, and various organics like dichloroethane, benzene, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, and trichloroethylene. Oxides of nitrogen and sulfur are common pollutants from coal, and are found at higher levels in anthracite than in bituminous coal. The known health consequences of this toxic brew of air and water pollution are many, and include nervous system problems in infants and children, asthma, chronic bronchitis, lung cancer, a suite of cardiovascular problems and kidney disease. The environmental impacts are well documented, and not pretty.

But all of those inconvenient truths are just part of a liberal conspiracy if you believe the GOP.

And one wonders just why anybody believes anything the GOP has to say anymore. Talk about some nasty agendas.

This one wonders why you accept without question the opinion of a blogger on a left wing site.

 

[skookerasbil]

This thread is gay................

Its irrelevant.........except to the haters. But they dont matter as is brilliantly illustrated in my thread, "AGW Debate: The Bottome Line"

This glacier.........that temperature.........this ice..........that hockey stick. LMAO......nobody cares anymore. Indeed..........reality is 95% perception.