Wow, really?! The Saharan Desert and Amazon rainforest cover less area than they ever have. I suppose that since the damage is temporary.Re the Saharan Desert, when did the land first become a desert? When Detriot sold the first SUV? When Fossil fuel power plants first fired up?
The Sahara has undergone a series of wet periods, the most recent occurring c.5,000–10,000 years ago; it was not until c.3000 B.C. that the Sahara transformed into its present arid state.Sahara (http://www.bartleby.com/65/sa/Sahara.html)
3000 BC was about 5000 years ago. Hmmmm... what was man doing then to cause global warming? And why is a DECREASE in desert area a bad thing?
As for the Amazon JUNGLE ("rainforest" is a wussy term used by unwashed, unshaven, lice-infested, Birkenstock-shod, microcephalic ecowackos), whose problem is that? Is it Bush's fault? Should the US pay the penalty because the inhabitants of the region are denuding it of trees and other vegetation?
Between May 2000 and August 2005, Brazil lost more than 132,000 square kilometers of forest—an area larger than Greece—and since 1970, over 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed. Why is Brazil losing so much forest? What can be done to slow deforestation?
In many tropical countries, the majority of deforestation results from the actions of poor subsistence cultivator. However, in Brazil only about one-third of recent deforestation can be linked to "shifted" cultivators. A large portion of deforestation in Brazil can be attributed to land clearing for pastureland by commercial and speculative interests, misguided government policies, inappropriate World Bank projects, and commercial exploitation of forest resources. For effective action it is imperative that these issues be addressed. Focusing solely on the promotion of sustainable use by local people would neglect the most important forces behind deforestation in Brazil.
Brazilian deforestation is strongly correlated to the economic health of the country: the decline in deforestation from 1988-1991 nicely matched the economic slowdown during the same period, while the rocketing rate of deforestation from 1993-1998 paralleled Brazil's period of rapid economic growth. During lean times, ranchers and developers do not have the cash to rapidly expand their pasturelands and operations, while the government lacks funds to sponsor highways and colonization programs and grant tax breaks and subsidies to forest exploiters.
A relatively small percentage of large landowners clear vast sections of the Amazon for cattle pasturelan. Large tracts of forest are cleared and sometimes planted with African savanna grasses for cattle feeding. In many cases, especially during periods of high inflation, land is simply cleared for investment purposes. When pastureland prices exceed forest land prices (a condition made possible by tax incentives that favor pastureland over natural forest), forest clearing is a good hedge against inflation.
Such favorable taxation policies, combined with government subsidized agriculture and colonization programs, encourage the destruction of the Amazon. The practice of low taxes on income derived from agriculture and tax rates that favor pasture over forest overvalues agriculture and pastureland and makes it profitable to convert natural forest for these purposes when it normally would not be so.Amazon Destruction: Why is the rainforest being destroyed in Brazil? (http://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_destruction.html)
Do you think that American SUVs and power plants are causing Amazon deforestation? Or are you just reciting the FOE/Greenpeace bullshit without bothering to do the slightest bit of research? That would be typical of the brain-damaged liberals who infect this board.
... we can get all that back, as well as all the extinct flora and fauna that went with it, and any possible cures they held? That's amazing.Why are you here whining to us about it? We aren't doing it. Take your bitching to those who ARE. They will no doubt grovel at your feet in abject contrition and instantly become Gaia worshippers.
And let me ask you this... if you found out that corpses didn't carry diseases after all, would you let your neighbor stack decaying bodies in your garage, assuming that it was within the constraints of law?And that has what to do with the topic of this thread? That's called a "Straw Man". BTW, there are in fact laws that would disallow stacking corpses like cordwood on one's property.
If you found out that inhaling fumes from car exhaust wasn't bad for your health, would you consider sleeping in a room with that exhaust coming through the vents? Would you let your mother or your children do it?Damn, kid, you're building a straw-man army. Is that what passes for "argument" on your favorite middle-school chatroom?
Whether or not global warming is true, the moral is to take care of your environment.And no doubt you collij boies deceive yourselves that you are the only people on Earth who are "concerned" for the environment. Obviously you believe that we are Plejarans or Reticulans who live elsewhere and just commute to Earth for work.
Clue time, kid: we live here, as do our families and our neighbors. Ergo we are part of the biosphere. What affects you whiny-assed tree-huggers affects us. Therefore we understand the necessity for good stewardship of the planet. However, unlike you kneejerk greenies, we don't worship it. We don't think of humans as a virus infecting Earth. And we are capable of seeing the need for stewardship based on logic and reason, rather than on dancing naked around a campfire chanting Wiccan mantras and praying to nature deities.
So, it's irrelevant whether the theory is true or not.Yep, it doesn't matter one jot whether or not AGW is B-movie junk science. We must assume that it is true and spend trillions of dollars on trying to prevent nature from doing its thing, because a bunch of craniorectally-impacted, wannabe-world-saving looneytoons say so.
There should be laws against littering ...There are.
... there should be laws restricting smog ...There are. But why don't you take your crusade south of the border?
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v349/DocDoom777/Energy-Eco/MexicoCityAir.jpg" align="left" hspace="8" />Over the past few decades, Mexico has experienced rapid economic growth. Despite several serious economic crises, Mexico's real gross domestic product (GDP) grew 205% between 1971 and 2001, from $265 billion (1995-PPP) to $807 billion 1995-PPP.* While this economic expansion succeeded in raising average incomes for Mexico's growing population, inadequate attention to pollution controls and infrastructure considerations led to significant environmental degradation.
Though there had been public health elements to previous pieces of legislation, Mexico only began to seriously address environmental protection in the late 1980s and 1990s. The first comprehensive environmental bill, the General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection (LGEEPA), was enacted in 1988. In 1996, it was amended to make sustainable development an explicit concern of the federal government. Mexico has given principal responsibility for environmental policy to the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), although important enforcement duties are delegated to state and local governments.
[snip]
Air pollution
The Mexican Health Secretariat says that more than a third of Mexico's disease burden is the result of environmental factors, the most serious of which is air pollution. A recent CEC study found that respiratory ailments related to air pollution were the cause of death for at least half of the more than 2,800 minors who died in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez. Though especially pressing in the country's largest cities (e.g. Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Ciudad Juarez), air pollution also has intensified along the border with the United States because of the growing number of factories ("maquiladoras") located there, as well as the increased truck traffic with the United States. Air pollution in northern Mexico also impacts the United States border areas.
Mexico City has the worst air pollution in the country and ranks among the most polluted cities in the world. Its ozone levels exceed World Health Organization standards 300 days a year, and SEMARNAT has estimated that the air in Ciudad Juarez is 40% less contaminated than in the capital. Exhaust fumes from Mexico City's estimated 4 million motor vehicles, many of which are old and especially environmentally damaging, are the main source of air pollutants. The city's air problem is aggravated by its unique geography. Mexico City resides in a basin more than 7,400 feet above sea level and is surrounded on three sides by mountains. These isolate the city from regional weather disturbances and trap pollution.Mexico: Environmental Issues (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/mexenv.html)
You are of course aware that Mexico is exempt from the Kyoto crap.
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Do you have the slightest notion of the environmental destruction that has been wreaked by the ecoloony assholes who have prevented sound forestry practices? Do you know why forest fires are such disasters? Look no further than the tofu-eating morons who have rammed their "no logging" bullshit down America's throat.
Q: what burns the most readily in forests?
A: deadwood and old-growth trees.
Q: and what do the ecoässholes stop us from removing from the forests?
A: deadwood and old-growth trees.
How about the annual brushfires in California? What makes them so dangerous? A: the same egregiously stupid sons of bitches prevent clearing the overgrowth and the dead brush.
Are you aware that you envirozealots are responsible for deaths?
During a recent forest fire, help for trapped firefighters was delayed out of fear that it might harm the "endangered" bull trout. Result: The fish were saved; four firefighters died.
A crew battling a wildfire makes a radio request for a helicopter water drop. Fighting forest fires is always hot, exhausting, dangerous work, and in the tinderboxes which are our grossly mismanaged national forests, a momentary delay can be deadly. If you're the radio dispatcher who receives the request, what do you do?
A) Immediately order the water drop.
B) Deny the request because the drop may risk harming an "endangered" fish.
C) Relay the request to "higher authorities" who will dither for hours trying to determine whether departmental policy allows suspension of the fish rules in order help the firefighters.
For any normal, rational person, the decision is a no-brainer. But today, when the supposed interests of "endangered" dung beetles, snail darters, suckers, and gnatcatchers regularly trump those of mere humans, federal employees are not allowed the luxury of normalcy and rationality.
On July 10th, four firefighters battling a blaze in Washington state's Okanogan National Forest were killed by the fire, after waiting more than nine hours for a requested water drop. Trapped by flames, Tom Craven, 30, Devin Weaver, 21, Jessica Johnson, 19, and Karen Fitzpatrick, 18, tried to survive by huddling in their fire-resistant survival tents. The tents merely served as their death shrouds. A co-worker, Jason Emhoff, survived but was severely burned.
The tragic death toll was very nearly much, much higher. Seventeen additional fire crew members and two hikers narrowly escaped the fatal blaze.Saving Fish Before Firefighters (http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2001/09-10-2001/vo17no19_fish.htm)
Environmentalism has killed tens of millions of people, if not hundreds of millions, and could soon kill many more. Environmentalists' jihad against DDT sentenced millions to death from malaria in the Third World, their opposition to dams destroyed New Orleans, and their abasement of auto safety has mangled and killed tens of thousands. Even the World Trade Center towers destroyed on 9/11 would have remained standing far longer, enabling more people to escape, if it were not for an environmentalist scare about the most efficient fire retardant known to man for millennia.
This year, the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Christmas card portrays two cavemen having a discussion. One says, "Something's just not right—our air is clean, our water is pure, we all get plenty of exercise, everything we eat is organic and free-range, and yet nobody lives past thirty." The CEI card makes, in a brief, humorous, but unanswerable way, the point that without civilization, our lives would indeed be nasty, brutish, and short. The sort of "return to nature" promoted by environmentalists would strip us of our progress and reduce us to the state of the animals they so adore.
In "Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism is Hazardous to Your Health" CEI fellow John Berlau takes a tour through some of the most egregious public health disasters perpetrated by environmentalists in the past few decades while warning of more that could come. Berlau, with years of experience as a political and investigator reporter, writes in an informal style easy for the layman to understand while being sure to include the quotations and statistics needed to buttress his arguments. With hundreds of endnotes, the book provides anyone who is interested with plenty of citations to follow in order to deepen his knowledge.Environmentalism's Death Toll for 'Nature' (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=18621)
America would be far better off if every ignorant dipshit who screeches about the environment while preventing proactive environmental control were lined up against a wall and machine-gunned. Not only would we then be able to prevent rather than respond to ecological problems, but every dead asswipe would lessen greenhouses gases by 365 kilograms of CO2 per year. It's a win-win situation.
Now go tell your poli sci prof that your ass has been julienned and handed back to you in a Tupperware bowl.
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