Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Thats why we have government regulations, but we just need to make sure the regulations are based on sound science. And which countries are cleaner, have cleaner water, less pollution, countries where the governments run things, backward countries, where industry is not progressive? You can't even drink the water in many countries. We need to thank business for innovation, and that includes pollution prevention technology.

balls business causes pollution

Now, if you don't mind to educate me: how do you get to that?

SS finally couldn't resist and let loose one of those signature "LOL" giggles.

It's alright, walter. SS/JW is just a bit miffed at me and the world right now.

Of course, the Australian event is nothing in and of itself. But as we know, there aren't many left who aren't on the payroll of energy corporations (or within conservative political movements) who continue to insist that the best wheels are square.

Well, when one teacher gets at the other ...

...blood-smeared chalk-brushes, textbooks shoved down throats, pencils sticking out of eyeballs...it's always ugly.

I know, since I've been quite often in teacher's staff rooms

(Which is, seriously, a big difference to staff rooms in universities.)

when we came to canada 50 years ago the water in lake ontario was clean enough for drinking , fish were plentyful and could be eaten with no ill effect , niagara falls was a clean and beautiful spectacle to look at .

today : don't dare drink the lake water ; even after it's gone through the purification process it tastes like mud - can't drink the water without britta filter !
most fish have so much mercury that there is a warning against eating them .
and niagara falls , you ask ?
when you are looking at the bottom of the falls , it 's like looking into a foambath - from all the chemicals being dumped into the river upstream .
anyone remember the notorious "love canal" ?

and industry prevents pollution ? sorry but i'm gasping for air !
hbg

...THE LOVE CANAL DISASTER...

Isn't there alot of controversy about what the facts really were at Love Canal, that possibly it has been misrepresented? A quick search reveals this to be the case, although I don't care to spend the time to sort through all of this now.

Yeah. It's like the raging controvery over whether or not nicotine smoothes the skin and promotes regularity while significantly increasing IQ.

Actually we are seeing this foaming action in what used to be pristine headwaters of our most beautiful rivers and streams. I am beginning to think it is from all of the detergents being added to gas and oil to make them "cleaner burning". The problem increases tenfold when you realize these things meant to keep the air clean contaminate water so easily - and are extraordinarily toxic.

We'll be the judge of that.

To put things into perspective, despite all the horrible doomsday pollution, we are living longer than ever. Compared to Neanderthals that lived an estimated 20 years (I don't know how somebody figured that out?), we are living to be about 80, and this compared to 50 in the early 20th century or 34 for present day un-civilized groups. This according to the following.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

That's not quite the way it works. When people use those figures of average lifespan, it doesn't mean people don't live longer than 20 (and I think that's short for Neanderthals, actually), it means that's the average lifespan, figured out by averaging the ages of death of the entire known population. Until around the start of the twentieth century in developed countries, and during the 20th century in most others, childbirth and infant mortality were huge. If you've got a quarter or a third, or more, of your population dying before the age of five, as was typical, with a lot of disease around and degenerative diseases going, people kicked off pretty regularly thru their lifetimes, and the age cohorts looked very different than they do today, but people still lived into their 40s, 50s, and 60s--they didn't all die before 21.

I realize the points you made, but nevertheless it is nice not to die as an infant, and even taking that factor out, we are still living longer. The point is when people begin to talk about how bad pollution is, we are all being killed, I think we need to be brought back to the reality of how well we are actually doing. Problems, yes, but there have always been problems, and we are doing fairly well.

We've solved, or at least mitigated, a lot of the old things that killed us. They were and potentially still could be (when more of them develop immunity to the drugs we develop, and they are doing that) really, really deadly. But we are also creating new things to kill us off-- tobacco, for example, which was used sparingly, largely as a sacrament, by Native Americans. It took Europeans to turn it into a killer. Air pollution, for another--which was greatly reduced by government intervention, you will notice, okie, not by any sort of business competition or action, which was just making it worse. And industrial pollution--there are thousands of chemicals being used out there, and much as at Love Canal, given the passage of a few years and a couple corporate changes of ownership, and sometimes government stupidity (like a lot of what the town of Niagara Falls did at Love Canal), no one knows what's there, corporate memory dies off, and some fairly horrible things can happen. And there has been virtually no research on what effects combinations of those chemicals can do to us. It's a potentially toxic broth we're cooking up (look at concentrations of mercury in fish we eat for example).

Point being, it's not a unidirectional flow, ever onward and upward. You can't be Pollyanna-ish about it. Some things have gotten better, to be sure, but other things have gotten worse. And it's important to try to make the things getting worse better too. Which is why it's important to start doing SOMETHING, even if you know it's only a start, or won't solve the problem, because mitigation is important. At least make it less worse. And by making the start you often learn, or invent, new things and solutions that will eventually work better, whcih you don't do if you just sit on the sidelines and say we have no solution. Which is why Kyoto is important. Nobody thought it was a solution, but it was what everyone knew it to be, a start, an attempt to look at the problem, engage it, and start to work out more comprehenive solutions.

And, lest you think we're not creating new problems for ourselves, remember the Cuyahoga River, the first river ever to catch fire:


(lyrics to "Burn On", by Randy Newman)


There's a red moon rising
On the Cuyahoga River
Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

There's a red moon rising
ON the Cuyahoga River
Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

There's an oil barge winding
Down the Cuyahoga River
Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

There's an oil barge winding
Down the Cuyahoga River
Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

Cleveland city of light city of magic
Cleveland city of light you're calling me
Cleveland, even now I can remember
'Cause the Cuyahoga River
Goes smokin' through my dreams

Burn on, big river, burn on
Burn on, big river, burn on
Now the Lord can make you tumble
And the Lord can make you turn
And the Lord can make you overflow
But the Lord can't make you burn

Burn on, big river, burn on
Burn on, big river, burn on

I agree there are problems, but I do not think they are nearly as severe as some portray it as. For example, I firmly believe the things we voluntarily and knowingly harm ourselves with are still by far the worst, and that is smoking, drinking, over-eating, and lack of exercise. I believe it is almost sad, but also humorous to witness neighborhoods turn out in force to protest some kind of industry because they think it is terrible for public health, while one can peruse the crowd and see a bunch of mostly softie, overweight, couch potatoes, and probably including many smokers. I've known people that bought filtered water because they did not think the water was safe, but they smoked 3 packs a day and wondered why their kid always had bronchitis.

Right now, one of our largest public health problems is diabetes, but take a look around and watch the people, including children down supersized sodas all day.

It is human nature to blame something on somebody else.

Some of the things deemed terrible by the EPA are minerals or elements in water and the air, yet people go to the health food store to buy supplements with some of those very same things super-dosed in the pills. Example, we need some selenium to be healthy, but too much will kill us. Many of the regulations assume none is better than some, when that might not be the case. I see much potential for straining at a gnat but swallowing a camel, to use a Bible saying.

I admit to some industrial concerns. One of mine is the hormones and antibiotics pumped into our meat we devour each day. I do not think the FDA is onto this as they should be. I do not advocate we quit trying to clean things up, but I just think we should be more balanced and reasonable, and I think we might be over-concentrating on some things while ignoring others that might be more of a threat. That is probably unavoidable, but to repeat, I think we need to concentrate a bit more on what goes into our food, such as how beef, chicken, and pork are raised and processed.

P.S. I think our society is way over medicated.