Obama Planning New Rules For Oil and Gas Industry's Methane Emissions 202
mdsolar sends this quote from the NY Times:
In President Obama's latest move using executive authority to tackle climate change, administration officials will announce plans this week to impose new regulations on the oil and gas industry's emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, according to a person familiar with Mr. Obama's plans. The administration's goal is to cut methane emissions from oil and gas production by up to 45 percent by 2025 from the levels recorded in 2012.
The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the proposed regulations this summer, and final regulations by 2016, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the administration had asked the person not to speak about the plan. The White House declined to comment on the effort. Methane, which leaks from oil and gas wells, accounts for just 9 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas pollution — but it is over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, so even small amounts of it can have a big impact on global warming.
The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the proposed regulations this summer, and final regulations by 2016, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the administration had asked the person not to speak about the plan. The White House declined to comment on the effort. Methane, which leaks from oil and gas wells, accounts for just 9 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas pollution — but it is over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, so even small amounts of it can have a big impact on global warming.
This makes sense nomatter your politik (Score:5, Funny)
Methane is a far more powerful (25 times or so) greenhouse gas than c02, so sealing leaky problem wells and extraction sites makes perfect sense.
But since Obama proposed it, I'm against it.
Re:This makes sense nomatter your politik (Score:4, Informative)
I don't see anybody trying to regulate that...
It's spelled E. P. A. and they want to regulate water everywhere, even that drainage ditch in your back yard.
Re:This makes sense nomatter your politik (Score:5, Informative)
Except humans don't emit a lot of water vapor.
They do however emit a lot of CO2 and Methane, which as part of the feedbook loop in global warming causes more water vapor in the air, further exacerbating the heating effects of all greenhouse gases, H2O included.
The water vapor argument is a deflection, and a poor one at that.
http://www.skepticalscience.co... [skepticalscience.com]
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Except humans don't emit a lot of water vapor.
Only in every exhale, feel free to stop emitting any time
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Except humans don't emit a lot of water vapor.
Every man-made water feature does that on a regular basis.
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Dude, don't you remember the di-hydrogen monoxide debacle in the 90's by some county government in California? And yes, they have been regulating it ever since. Half the west coast is in a drought because they are reserving most of the water normally pumped there for irrigation so they have enough to cool the new NSA super computer and spy central building in Utah.
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Oh fuck! I give up!
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Pendant watches are coming back :-)
Re:This makes sense nomatter your politik (Score:5, Interesting)
Methane doesn't last long in the atmosphere
that '25 times as powerful as CO2' statistic is its equivalent over a 100-year period. even though methane may not last long before being oxidized into CO2, during that period it has a much greater forcing.
trust me here, methane aint nothin to fuck with. tightening up leaks is inarguably a good thing.
Methane compared to CO2 (Score:4, Informative)
Methane doesn't last long in the atmosphere
>that '25 times as powerful as CO2' statistic is its equivalent over a 100-year period
Not according to the references I can find.
from http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014... [mit.edu]
"...methane is a potent greenhouse gas, as well as a significant byproduct of using natural gas — advocated by many as a “bridge” to a lower-emissions future. But a direct comparison between methane and carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas emitted by human activities, is complicated: While the standard figure used for emissions trading and technology evaluation says that, gram for gram, methane is about 30 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2, scientists say that’s an oversimplification.
''As reported in a paper published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, authored by MIT assistant professor of engineering systems Jessika Trancik and doctoral student Morgan Edwards, this conversion factor (called the global warming potential, or GWP) may significantly misvalue methane. Getting this conversion factor right is challenging because methane’s initial impact is much greater than that of CO2 — by about 100 times. But methane only stays in the atmosphere for a matter of decades, while CO2 sticks around for centuries. The result: After six or seven decades, the impact of the two gases is about equal, and from then on methane’s relative role continues to decline."
Or, if you prefer Wikipedia as a source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Methane compared to CO2 (Score:4, Interesting)
Or, if you prefer Wikipedia as a source
from your link:
methane's Global warming potential (GWP) for 100-year time horizon: 25.
which is exactly what i said.
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Methane doesn't last long in the atmosphere
that '25 times as powerful as CO2' statistic is its equivalent over a 100-year period. even though methane may not last long before being oxidized into CO2, during that period it has a much greater forcing.
trust me here, methane aint nothin to fuck with. tightening up leaks is inarguably a good thing.
OH BS;
If the warmistas at realclimate say it ain't the methane, it ain't the methane! Everybody is just freaking becuase there has been no s
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Methane degrades into CO2, in fact, so in simulations I did (Archer and Buffett, 2005) the radiative forcing from the elevated methane concentration throughout a long release was about matched by the radiative forcing from the extra CO2 accumulating
what's a 'long release'?
Re:This makes sense nomatter your politik (Score:5, Insightful)
So people who always agree with the Anointed One are thoughtful, but people who always disagree with Him are thoughtless. Got it. Your use of logic and reason are truly inspirational. Carry on, AC.
In fairness that's a strawman. The AC never claimed that people who always agree with "the Anointed One" are thoughtful. He merely claimed that a specific person who, by their own admission, is against anything Obama is for without even needing to think about it is thoughtless. And IMHO that's kind of hard to argue with.
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As a one-time alleged reactionary, so far today, I'm either 100% with him, or 50-50. I completely agree with him on the internet; not so sure about this one, but I'm not close-minded. If the cost of compliance is not exorbitant, I suppose there is nothing wrong with this. At least it would reduce some blatant waste.
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To argue you'd have to think...
<homersimpson>Ah, Lisa, the whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time</homersimpson>
reduce production (Score:2, Insightful)
Obama has always been trying to reduce domestic oil production.
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Obama has always been trying to reduce domestic oil production.
Well that's a good thing, no? He tried to reduce domestic oil production, now it's blowing through the roof.
Maybe he is smarter than you realize. Wheels within wheels.
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Uh, well technology and the fact that Oil has been highly profitable have created more incentives to extract resources from less abundant and traditional sources. What does need to happen is that subsidies for the Oil/Gas industry need to be eliminated and they need to play by the same rules as any other company with respects to land use, reclamation and pollution. The Oil/Gas industry shouldn't however be targeted because it's not "ECO Friendly" with punitive regulations because as far as I can see, oil
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What does need to happen is that subsidies for the Oil/Gas industry need to be eliminated and they need to play by the same rules as any other company
they do, all companies can write off investments. Or do you think we are actually paying these companies money rather than simply letting them keep more of the money they made?
Re:reduce production (Score:4, Interesting)
No one is calling for deindustrialization.
No, it's not killing old in Europe.
Stop repeating myths.
Murry Salby is a denier who regularly writes for denier blogs, and who has stated the rise in CO2 levels shown in all historical data is completely natural and not at all related to human production. He was also debarred from the National Science Foundation for fraud related to his salary (claiming many more work hours than he worked).
And Ben Stein's opinion on Obama matters about as much as a warm bucket of spit.
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Wow.. He asked that you watch the video first because the math works out and you ignore it all and go straight for the character assassination as if it is some magic bullet that dismisses all.
I guess I'm going to have to watch the video now. Obviously there is something factual since your rebuttal to it is rooted in someone being a "denier". If I had mod point, I would mod you interesting too. But maybe not for the same reasons other did.
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it is killing old people in Europe who can't afford the 'green' energy at three times the price (Google it)
Uhh, no. I'd rather you cite it. I'm eagerly awaiting.
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It's good because it gives us more time to engineer a smooth transition to alternatives.
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Why is it good? why is de-industralization good? it is killing old people in Europe who can't afford the 'green' energy at three times the price (Google it).
1) what has reducing methane emissions
1b) on oil production!!
to do do with "deindustrialization"?
2) how do you come to the retarded idea that
2a) methane emission reduction in the USA
2b) has anything to do with energy prices in europe
2c) makes energy for old people to expensive
2d) they die from that
????????????????
In Europe we have welfare! If you are t
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Oh come on, there are more than enough elderly barely squeaking by in a new catagory known as energy poor, to make it obvious that any increase in energy costs is going to kill people, your sounding like the Marie Antoinette misquote "Let them eat cake".
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Re:reduce production (Score:4, Insightful)
Is his complete failure to reduce production the reason you (likely) hate him? Since Obama took office, oil production has increased 50%:
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hi... [eia.gov]
The reason it's probably going to drop precipitously in the next few months/year is due to the whims of OPEC, not the administration. Do heartland states really want to tie your economies so tightly to how Arabs are feeling?
Re:reduce production (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.westernenergyallian... [westernene...liance.org]
The massive increase in production is due to private enterprise and mostly private land, nothing to do with the feds:
http://www.exxonmobilperspecti... [exxonmobil...ctives.com]
Ferret
Re:reduce production (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair,
Nahh, thats no fun. If we play the politics game we get some fun facts(ish): Obama has delivered Michelle Bachman's promise of $2 gas (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/19/michele-bachmann-stands-by-2-a-gallon-gas-pledge/) and is on track to deliver Mitt Romney's promise of 12M new jobs (or get real close anyway, 2.5M jobs are currently being added each year). Of course we all know the main connection between administrations and economic issues is taking credit when things are good and getting blamed when things are bad. (That said there are exceptions such as deregulation->mortgage crisis...getting off topic here)
If we want to be fair, these new methane regulations are merely holding oil producers accountable for the consequences of their activities. If that reduces production then its only reverting back to what it should have been all along had all costs been considered at the outset.
Side note: since those industrious oil scamps increased production all on their own without federal handouts (i.e. access to fed managed land) then we no longer need to consider drilling in ANWR and the like, right?
Good luck - he'll be 7 years OOO by then (Score:2)
>> administration's goal is to cut methane emissions from oil and gas production by up to 45 percent by 2025
Good luck, pal. You'll be OOO for 7 solid years by then.
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If the strategy is legitimate and the same government remains, I would suspect the plan to be upheld.
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legitimate policy or headline grabbing? He has to have something to talk about next week.
"just" 9 percent? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"just" 9 percent? (Score:4, Interesting)
FYI, one of the leading cause of methane "leaks" in the field are pneumatic-type controls use that work using the pressurized gas in the pipe instead of compressed air (more economical to use what is at hand, rather than build out electrical or compressed air infrastructure to power the controls). These types of controls necessarily bleed off pressure in order to work (or they'd be one-way controls that could open, but not close, or vice-versa) The EPA requires reporting based on their estimates of leakages from types of equipment, valves, piping, etc. When his company did an internal audit of losses, they found that they were losing a small fraction of the methane that the EPA forms required them to report. I'm not saying that the actual leakage is an insignificant contribution to warming, nor that the gas company got it exactly right, just that the EPA estimate of possible savings is likely over-estimated.
Probably at least as significant as methane entering the atmosphere from production facilities, is the methane that leaks from municipal distribution networks and consumer end uses.
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Not nearly as significant as the remaining 91% of greenhouse gas emissions, eh?
just in time (Score:2)
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What they should do is get that damn fusion reactor working before 2020
I've read some articles that state we're only spending enough money on developing fusion to hold our place - less money and we'd actually be losing knowledge as we wouldn't train enough scientists and engineers on the information to keep the knowledge up. More money and we'd actually develop the technology, though it would still take years even under a 'crash' type funding program.
Still, under any reasonable fusion scenario it wouldn't displace oil. It'd displace coal first. I'm also afraid that any 'eco
So much anger (Score:5, Interesting)
This seems like a reasonable goal. Methane is natural gas, why not capture and use it? Lots of places still flair tons of it off as part of the oil extraction process – so it may no longer be methane, but it is still carbon in the atmosphere with no useful purpose other than to make oil drilling easier.
Let’s face it Obama could cure cancer and a sizeable portion of the population led by Fox News would accuse him of putting doctors out of work. Natural gas is putting coal workers out of work, but the right blames Obama. Strange I though mining coals was dirty and dangerous and led to black lung. To the right those are all positive things because it shows what a strong work-ethic coal miners have.
How about we really try to make the future cleaner and safer and not scream so much about jobs. If jobs are going away in one sector the answer is to retrain and educate to work in new safer better sectors. Last century’s jobs will not keep our economy afloat in the information age.
I’ll probably get burned on mod points for saying this, but at least half these anger posts are probably some repressed prejudice and bigotry. Obama hasn’t been the greatest president ever – so evidently everyone made a mistake voting a black man to office. The economy is better; we have fewer troops fighting and no new wars. But the right is convinced it would have done 10x better. They sure screwed the pooch the administration before – lord help me how did they make so many gains in the midterms?
It slowly got safe to point to Obama’s failings at which point the mob turned. Early after the first election you could be accused of being a bigot for criticizing the president at all. Now the pendulum has swung the other way and the bigots have ample cover to yell criticism. Of course I will get angry replies that it is all about the jobs and the economy and our foreign policy – and you may well believe it. But really it just galls to have a black man in power, especially if he threatens anything that whites see as fair play and ethnics see as white privilege.
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most helium released from the earth is also just vented at many natural gas sites instead of being used; instead of a helium shortage we really just have a neuron in use shortage for now. Raising the bar for industry not to waste and pollute would have many long term benefits
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On the other hand, oil companies operating in the middle of nowhere, like rigs offshore or in the middle of the Arabian desert, are going to flare off the gases if they have no way to transport it.
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Let’s face it Obama could cure cancer and a sizeable portion of the population led by Fox News would accuse him of putting doctors out of work.
Authoritarian Communist just wants to kill growth!!
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But when the dirty work is no longer needed -- why fight so hard to keep it?
It's the middle of January in Wisconsin (Score:2)
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It's the middle of January everywhere else too.
Talk is cheap now (Score:3)
Obama is starting to sound more like his old campaign-trail self than the president we have come to know. I think it's probably easy for him to make promises now as he can just blame the Republican congress when they don't actually happen.
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That and politics as usual. Democrats have to push a lot of extra fluff into bills now, so they can "compromise" by removing them... this kind of exercise helps keep the Republicans from targeting stuff they actually want to keep, while earning brownie points for both teams with their respective bases.
Historically the US economy has done well with a (D) President and an (R) Congress. So just sit back and relax and try to minimize administrative overhead while they sneak through the next pork barrel under
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Neither side wants to dig into the underbelly of what is fundamentally wrong unless it greases their wheels for getting re-elected.
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This plan is literally to hold industry accountable via regulations, rather than throwing public money at the problem. Do you just cut and paste this reply into any vaguely political thread?
Just so we're clear.... (Score:2)
Right now, Democrats are perfectly cool with a quasi-liberal president ruling by fiat while Republicans are enraged by his unconstitutional actions.
With the next Republican president, when he or she issues law circumventing Congress, Republicans will cheer while Democrats are apoplectic.
Actual principles like checks and balances, limited federal power, etc don't hold much sway in US politics today, so much as where the actors stand relative to the political poles.
Frankly, pox on both their houses. The road
Executive action (Score:2, Troll)
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Don't cow farts account for the second highest source of methane? Well not cows alone but human created in cattle, manure storage farming etc. I think in 2002 or 2004 methane from cattle or human created accounted for the highest source of methane release beating out the oil fuel industry as highest contributor in the US for methane.
Actually, cow belches account for most (~90%) of the methane produced by cows. The remainder comes from the other end, either as farts or as outgasses from feces.
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I saw this and immediately saw bull fucking shit.
Not that I necessarily disagree with you, I just immediately went there in my mind because of the wording.
Re:Emperor Obama (Score:5, Informative)
Gas taxes are per gallon, not per dollar. They make more in taxes when gas prices drop and people worry less about saving gas.
Re:Emperor Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
...what AC sibling said, and summarized for visibility: Federal gasoline taxes are a fixed amount per gallon, not a percentage of retail. Gas can be $0.50/gallon or $50.00/gallon, and the feds will take in the same amount based on actual consumption.
Higher gasoline taxes are however beneficial to the Oil Shale industry, which OPEC is currently trying to damage by creating the current glut.
I think it will however backfire on them as Russia is experiencing collateral damage from this, as is Venezuela, Canada, and other economies which rely on oil exports for a significant percentage of their wealth.
I don't see too much of an impact here in the US (outside of Texas and North Dakota), and what damage does occur may be offset by lower prices overall brought by the cheaper fuel/transportation costs.
I also doubt that Obama is specifically doing this to lash out at the oil industry, so much as doing it to satisfy his particular ideological and supporters' demands/desires as regards fossil fuels.
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need to fix a goof: higher gas prices are beneficial to the Shale Oil industry, not higher taxes.
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Or maybe he just, ya know, wants to do something to help the environment?
Re:Emperor Obama (Score:4, Insightful)
The profits are gathered or lost by a lot of folks:
* The largest consumers of petroleum such as airlines and other transportation companies stand to make or lose millions of dollars by a penny's change in prices.
* Oil companies obviously see a huge chunk of this, natch.
* Commodity traders
Not seeing too many of them (outside of Warren Buffett and his trains) who are friends of the president and would stand to benefit or lose anything significant from this. Then again, there is the Keystone XL pipeline... a crippled oil shale industry won't ship as much oil, which means that Mr. Buffett would have a stronger argument to continue shipping that oil on his rail lines.
Not special. (Score:2)
Re:Who's in charge, again? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure you'd really not like living in the fetid cesspool your environment would become if you killed off the EPA.
Oh, but, of course .. you're going to make the idiotic claim that if people want a clean environment 'that market' will find a solution.
The only solutions the market finds is maximizing profits, killing off the EPA just removes one more constraint to allow corporations to be even bigger assholes.
Tell you want, let the Republicans all live down stream of plants which have no EPA controls. I dare you. Go ahead, drink that water and tell us it's safe. Expose your children to it.
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Tell you want, let the Republicans all live down stream of plants which have no EPA controls. I dare you. Go ahead, drink that water and tell us it's safe. Expose your children to it.
Ha, ha - silly poster. That's never going to happen. More that 50% of Congress are millionaires [npr.org] (many "multi") and don't live where *we* live. The same goes for heads of large (polluting) corporations. I'm pretty sure none of them are here on /.
You're obviously correct about everything else though. The EPA saves the rest of us from those that don't care about the environment. (Which is pretty much one of the big roles of Government in general.)
Re:Who's in charge, again? (Score:4, Insightful)
We all agree that the obvious things are obvious. No one should be allowed to dump toxic waste in a creek. The non-obvious things are where things start to suck. For example a home owner find some outrageous amount for building an unauthorized pond, or restricting development due to a variety of field mouse.
No the market wont find a solution, because the market is designed to find the best price/competition point. There is no real incentive to protect the economy, other than maybe bad press. This is a valid function of government, but like everything else, is prone to abuse.
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Hmm...how many species do you reckon we should wipe out before the EPA should step in? C'mon, don't hold back, put a number on it.
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Last i checked there were velociraptors in the past, but not now. so why should a simple field mouse that is blocking progress get special treatment?
That field mouse may be eating a lot of cockroaches which will end up in your bed when you eliminate mice.
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The EPA is needed, but its growing into a giant lumbering obstacle to many economic and personal ventures.
If those "economic and personal ventures" would poison a few thousand people, push a dozen species to extinction, and make a large area of land practically uninhabitable, then good, the EPA should be an obstacle.
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More importantly, the market doesn't do very good job of predicting what solution will be needed. Rather, it must wait until a problem has occurred and then there are clear directions for market-based solutions. So, things like the interstate system never get built except as a labyrinth of disconnected routes with no rhyme or reason and they'll all be toll roads.
Clean air is similar. It would never have been cleaned up because just about all industries were involved in screwing up the air quality, so there
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The reality is, there are reams of problems where the fictional "the market" is incapable of achieving any solution.
"The market" doesn't solve problems, it doesn't achieve optimal outcomes. It's the aggregate outcome of a bunch of greedy bastards climbing over the carcasses of anybody who gets in their way, that's it.
It's an abstraction, and all of the positive outcomes attributed to it are either by accident, or a lie.
There is not, and there never has been a free market. Because it working and achieving
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For most of those 1000's of years, there was little industrialization, and no internal combustion engine.
And then we really started fucking things up.
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There's still no clean water in much of the world due to lack of environmental regulation/enforcement. Even in the USA there's tons of places with bad water, just not as bad as it could be. Want to bring back cholera?
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Just because the EPA would be killed off does not mean that environmental protections would disappear. What is would mean is that congress would actually have to follow the constitution and vote on them, pass them into law, and either get a president to sign them or override his veto.
The problem with the EPA is that it isn't easily answerable to anyone and makes regulation with the force of law without any constitutional oversight.
Re:Who's in charge, again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because brilliant geniuses like yourself remember how awesome it was back before things like the EPA and the Clean Air and Water acts?
Junior, some of us were alive in the 1960's and 1970's. We remember how well the "invisible hand" of the market didn't do shit to stop rampant pollution. We remember not being able to swim or fish in the rivers, lakes and bays we can now swim and fish in comfortably.
Go swim in some toxic sewage this weekend. Then get used to that feeling if the EPA is defunded.
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How about the coal slurry ponds that recently erupted? Those of use who grew up in the 60's and 70's are ashamed this is still allowed to happen.
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Why do you assume that if some over-regulating federal agency wasn't arround that a more responsive and effiecent state agency wouldn't have filled the void? Even now California has much stricker enviromental regs that the Fed have.
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Oddly enough, I don't believe you. Please substantiate.
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If congress defunds the EPA, a lot of US citizens will also find some balls....throughout their bodies. Some internally, some externally and some on their pre-existing balls themselves!!!
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Fallon? Pisshhh, we were doing balls in your mouth back in highschool. ...no wait, not that way! Thats not what I meant!
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Hopefully the Republican Congress will now find some balls and defund the EPA.
Do you even know part of the reason why the EPA was created originally?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River [wikipedia.org]
Before the EPA began enforcing regulations on pollution it was so rampant that the Cuyahoga River caught on fire multiple times. There were other rivers that were like this as well, but the Cuyahoga fire got a Time story that drew attention to it.
I don't know if you are one of those who believe that company's can self regulate, but the issue here was where the pollution was dumped into the rive
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I happen to think the EPA needs some reigning-in in certain respects, but what's it like puffing on that crack pipe? Congress is not going to "defund" anything; most certainly nothing as widely supported as the EPA. Hoping that it will is dreaming a particularly STUPID fairy tale.
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to be sure it'll hurt Americans but what has to happen is the alignment of corporate taxation to the rest of the world and to reduce the incentives of companies that outsource jobs. For example, the an Executive Action could be "The US government will stop dealing with companies who use H1B VISAs to fill positions that could be done by Americans." Or. "The US Government will not source services or products from any company that has more than 10% of its workforce offshore." better yet. "The US has immigra
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At least in the US most of them have enough credits that they don't actually pay a high percentage in taxes anyway.
Re:anything he can do to make things worse. (Score:5, Insightful)
The US system is horribly designed so incentive wise you actually have it backwards.
The public can't really tell who's fault is what when both sides point fingers, nor can they readily distinguish between the President and his party in congress. So they hold him accountable for everything that happens in government and every election is basically a referendum on whether the country is doing well.
So when the congress is controlled by another party it's actually in that congress's best interest to misgovern. Because the worse things get the more dissatisfied voters get, and more dissatisfied the voters the more they'll punish the President by voting the opposing party into congress.
There's a reason the Daily Show and Colbert Report could be so good by simply showing clips of politicians talking for large portions of the show. For a country of your size and wealth the quality of your governance is shockingly bad.
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Not disagreeing with 'quality of governance,' but what on earth does size and wealth have to do with it, in terms of *helping*?
I guess I expect that if any country should have the resources with which to build a competent government it should be the US. Then again I can see it going the other way as the extra size & wealth creates niches for the crazy to prosper.
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Not really all that far fetched.
In terms of GHG emissions from human activity, livestock production is responsible for 14.5 of all emissions, in terms of methane alone, it's responsible for 40%.
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You're probably joking or trolling but why the hell not?!
Cows produce huge amounts of it at regular intervals and its already part of the carbon cycle. Industrialized cattle farming (the cow forklift to slaughterhouse variety) probably releases enough methane to power itself. Plus they are likely located far from a power plant (wide open spaces and all) so you get back all the transmission losses as well! Sounds like a win win to me. Someone should get on it to see if it pans out. I know some farms already
No, cow belches are to blame (Score:2)
Fixed the subject for you. About 90% of the methane from cows comes from their belches. The rest comes from the other end, in the form of farts or outgassing feces.
Re:B-but externalized costs don't real! (Score:5, Informative)
The EPA is empowered, by Congress, to make such rules. The EPA falls under the executive branch, and so takes direction from the President, within the broad legislative mandate to protect the environment. In any event, the President hasn't actually issued new rules by decree - he's got certain goals, and has set the EPA to the task of actually drafting the rules and regulations through their normal process (which, for better or worse, includes lawsuits).
A President can't drop such regulations by decree, because that would violate the EPA's mandate and other existing laws enacted for the environment.
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Careful; you're effectively exploding some myths and fairy tales.
One more thing you didn't mention so I will. The EPA was not just enacted during Nixon's (R) tenure; it was PROPOSED by Nixon. Actually, the EPA was created by Executive Order, submitted to Congress (symbolically?) for approval, and approved.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, congress unconstitutionally abdicated their duties to the EPA in consideration of it's mandate. We now have a generic law that says it is illegal to not obey regulations put in place by a non-constitutional and non-elected bureaucracy giving them the ability to make law on a whim without any constitutional input in most cases.
As the head of the executive, he can order them to create these regulations independent of congress. In doing so, I'm betting this will also finally trigger the court cases t