Memories of 21, 42, 63 ... the 84th meandering

You gotta love gossip.

Controversial economist challenging cost of proposed EPA rule

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 3, 2009 11:17 AM

A controversial economist working at the Office of Management and Budget has raised questions about whether a new air pollution rule proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would impose too high a cost on coal-fired power plants, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Randall Lutter, who served as the Food and Drug Administration's head of policy under George W. Bush and has battled environmentalists for years on issues such as climate change and smog, has been examining the economic impact of federal rules at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Lutter is a long-time ally of OIRA's director, Cass Sunstein.

While Lutter's job portfolio remains unclear, documents in EPA's public docket show he is now probing whether a rule to cut sulfur dioxide emissions would cost coal-fired utilities too much. The rule -- which was proposed last month and would take effect in June under a court order -- would prohibit short-term spikes of sulfur dioxide, which has been linked to respiratory diseases and premature deaths.

While sulfur dioxide emissions are now measured in 24-hour and annual increments, the new rule would evaluate them every hour, prohibiting sulfur dioxide from exceeding a limit of 50 to 100 parts per billion in one hour.

In a Nov. 19 e-mail to EPA employee Charles Fulcher, Lutter questioned whether power plants, known as EGUs, or electric generation units, could reduce sulfur dioxide emissions without financial pain.

"Are these really instances of zero-cost emissions reductions, or are they instead instances of emissions reductions that should already be in the baseline?" Lutter wrote.

Lutter's role has alarmed environmentalists, who worry about his previous record on air pollution and global warming. In the 1990s, Lutter questioned the merits of imposing tougher smog standards, on the grounds that they could lead to more cases of skin cancer. He wrote an essay in a book called "Painting the White House Green" in which he called Carol Browner -- who now advises President Obama on climate change but pushed for the ozone standards as EPA administrator under President Clinton as "an overzealous grab for more administrative authority," adding EPA's action on them "set a low in the use of bad analysis to support bad environmental policy."

Lutter also wrote a paper backing Bush's decision to opt out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gases, writing, "By rejecting the doomed Kyoto treaty in the early days of his Administration, he is doing more to protect the climate than his critics realize. His European eco-critics should chill out."

Frank O'Donnell, president of the advocacy group Clean Air Watch, said, "Putting Lutter at OMB on environmental issues is like getting Dr. Kevorkian to review health-care reforms."

Lutter did not return a call placed to his White House office. Neither the White House nor EPA could be reached for comment on the matter.

Good earthturn all

Very nice, thanks sue.

Hi alex and all the wildclickers.

Rain and snow for the weekend, hurrah.

Cable hookup today, plus recyling old tv's, compy, and other electronics been sitting in the garage for a few years. More space is a good thing.

good day all ~

http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

Hi all --------- all clicked.

I have Christmas, B'Day, and all the other holidays with me now....... A new HP TouchSmart compy ------------- Yaaaaa

I'll have to work on nimbling my fingers I recon --------

sumac, good articles. My Patti has always been a giving person. She even surprised the local battered wives habitat by calling and asking how many ladies there were at the shelter during the holidays and sending that many nice little gifts to them. She does that often - this last Thanksgiving we gave them a smoked turkey.

Have a nice one all - I may be lost beneath the streets of Boston on the MTA for awhile, but, will be creaking on.

clicked

I should be upstairs hemming and tacking, but I'm procrastinating, eating herring and beet salad and relaxing.

<siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh>

Another Friday. All clicked.

We have had some very cold weather down here in NE TX. It is supposed to snow this afternoon and will get down to 24 degrees tonight.

Look out sumac, teeny and ehBeth. It's heading your way.

We're supposed to get a light wet dusting late Saturday afternoon, Danon, and I hear this morning that Houston is getting snow now.

Will go click now. Glad that the article resonated with your and Patti's acts of kindness. It has to help.

Holding the Line
H. Jesse Smith


Figure 1
CREDIT: JUPITERIMAGES

Roughly one-third of all the CO2 emitted by human activity is ultimately absorbed by the ocean, a process that has helped slow down the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. As the ocean continues to absorb CO2, however, the rate at which it does so is expected to decrease because of the changes in carbonate chemistry that CO2 uptake causes. Global warming should then accelerate, a frightening prospect considering how quickly temperatures are rising already. Several studies have shown that the uptake of atmospheric CO2 by some regions of the ocean has slowed already, but does that mean that the integrated world ocean has become a less effective CO2 sink? Knorr combines data from ice cores, direct atmospheric measurements, and emission inventories to show that the global fraction of emitted CO2 that remains in the atmosphere has stayed constant over the past 160 years, at least within the limits of uncertainty of the measurements. Khatiwala et al. also fail to detect a significant recent change in the fraction of CO2 that the ocean is absorbing, in an examination of both ocean and terrestrial CO2 sinks for the longer period of the past two and a half centuries. That is welcome news, but not reason to be complacent about the future, as sooner or later the capacity of the ocean to absorb CO2 will be reduced. The real question is why we have not seen evidence of that reduction already.

Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L21710 (2009); Nature 462, 346 (2009).

December 3, 2009, 11:04 am
In Letter to Obama, Senators State Conditions for Supporting Climate Bill
By JOHN M. BRODER

A group of Senate Democrats who are considered swing votes on pending climate change and energy legislation sent a letter to President Obama Thursday morning detailing their conditions for supporting any domestic bill or international treaty to address global warming.

The senators, most from industrial states or regions heavily dependent on coal for power generation, laid out 10 provisions any agreement must contain to win their support. They timed their letter to guide Mr. Obama’s thinking as he prepares to go to Copenhagen next week to address the United Nations conference on climate change that is working toward a binding international treaty. With few if any Republicans likely to support legislation imposing mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions, sponsors of the bill will need to round up virtually all Democrats to pass it, including these nine.

The senators who signed the letter are Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mark Begich of Alaska. All are fence-sitters on the legislation and their votes will be needed when the Senate bill comes up for debate early next year.

The signers of the letter say they will support climate legislation and international efforts to combat global warming if all nations " industrialized as well as developing " are held to stringent limits on climate-altering emissions. They say that tough verification and enforcement mechanisms are necessary. They want to see trade penalties levied against nations that do not comply with any international agreement. They say that any program to transfer technology to emerging nations must contain copyright protections for intellectual property. And any treaty or bill must protect American jobs and promote low-cost solutions to environmental problems.

The conditions are shared by virtually all the so-called Brown Dogs who come from manufacturing states and those that produce or use large amounts of coal. They are familiar to those who have followed the debate and reflect concerns about possible sharp increases in energy costs and loss of jobs in the heartland.

The White House issued the following statement in response to the letter:

The president agrees with many of the senators’ recommendations and has worked with other world leaders to advance a Copenhagen accord that reflects them. Domestically, the U.S. has taken numerous steps this year to transition to a clean energy economy " from setting an aggressive new fuel economy standard for new cars and trucks to making an historic investment in clean energy in the Recovery Act this year. The president worked closely with members of Congress as they passed comprehensive energy legislation out of the House and is working with senators to pass a bill that will decrease our dependence on foreign oil, create jobs and enhance American competitiveness.

In addition to taking strong action at home, the president has kept climate change at the forefront of our foreign policy throughout the year. Following bilateral meetings with China and India, each country announced that they would take significant mitigation actions and stand by those commitments, and they called for full transparency as to their implementation. Since those meetings, China has announced a mitigation plan. And the president has worked with Prime Minister Rasmussen in support of a comprehensive accord in which all countries take meaningful steps, that has immediate operational effect and rallies a global response to the global threat of climate change.

Rain and snow arriving Saturday evening, and rain forecast for next week.

Now that's what I call getting rid of the draught! (dancin')

Recycled electronics picked up today, and next week after the rains, more paint.

Today relaxing, reading, and watching tv

Stay warm wildclickers - weathers a tad freezing.

http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

((((((((((clickrs)))))))))))

all cricked, clicked, crocked and cracked

hugs y'all x

Monkeys Recognize Their Pals in Photos
Fri Dec 4, 11:49 pm ET

FRIDAY, Dec. 4 (HealthDay News) -- Monkeys can recognize photographs of other monkeys they know, proving that they can both detect differences in faces and figure out if they've seen them before, researchers report.

The study also shows that capuchin monkeys can decipher the two-dimensional nature of a photograph, the scientists authors noted.

The findings, reported by researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, are published the week of Dec. 4 in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study, the monkeys looked at four photos, including one of a monkey they knew. They also looked at another four monkey photos, including one of a monkey they didn't know.

"This required monkeys to look at similar-looking faces and use their personal knowledge of group mates to solve the task," lead researcher Jennifer Pokorny, said in a university news release. "They readily performed the task and continued to do well when shown new pictures in color and in grayscale, as well as when presented with individuals they had never before seen in pictures, though with whom they were personally familiar."

According to the researchers, previously, there hasn't been evidence that nonhuman primates can look at two-dimensional images and understand they represent things and animals from real life.

I listened to a piece on CBC radio about the monkeys/photos the other night. Fascinating stuff.

We danced our feet off last night. My adrenaline rush is over <sigh>.

Clicked.

I tracked down the link below to share here after reading the article in my copy of Smithsonian Magazine. If you have the time, it is well worth it and the following quote explains why:

"Wildlife trafficking is thought to be the third most valuable illicit commerce in the world, after drugs and weapons, worth an estimated $10 billion a year, according to the U.S. State Department. Birds are the most common contraband; the State Department estimates that two million to five million wild birds, from hummingbirds to parrots to harpy eagles, are traded illegally worldwide every year. Millions of turtles, crocodiles, snakes and other reptiles are also trafficked, as well as mammals and insects."


http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Wildlife-Trafficking.html

Clicked and awaiting a possible brush with winter. How did you make out Danon?

New costumes, and reveling with friends sounds awsome.

The last time i danced..........well.........eons. The old gray mare, etc..........

Sooooooooo cold, with first winter snow due Monday for the foothills.

Beth, how in the world do you manage dancing and facebook stuff to.

incredible

izzzzzzzzzzie, sue, dan, beth, teeny, alex and all wildclickers - have a good day

http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

Some time ago Danon asked for the poster "World at Night", I just came across it again - it's a satellite picture composite, and a thing of beauty:
http://www.wellesley.edu/Biology/Faculty/Mmoore/Images/Research_light/Worldatnight.jpg

The hard cold is passing - has passed - us by. We will be back to our normal Fall chill. The snow was all south of us. Nothing here except cold and sunshine.

Have a nice weekend all.

No dancing here - well, ok. taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptpa-clunk ----------

------------ I'm baaaaack.
Nice pic Hoft. That's a lotta lights.

Hi you! Glad you stopped by to say 'hi'.

Beautiful color and tone - a georgous photo!

How was your Sacramento trip, H? Hope to visit next trip.

Yo Dan, any snow in NE Texas? A bit of dusting for portions of Texas not seen for the past 50 years - saws video on the news.

Now i recall why i didn't have a tv. After watching one news program, the tv was shut off, i left the room, turned on my computer, and played bejeweled blitz.

Tomorrow - Football! Hurray!

No snow here. All the snow was south of us. We had nothing but blue skies and very cold - 24 degrees. But, that's heading east, so we will have pleasant days ahead.