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Post by nautonnier on Dec 7, 2013 14:13:23 GMT
I don't want the EPA shut down, but I do want the EPA to use sensible rules based on SCIENCE. Not wishful thinking. The EPA should be shut down as a Federal Agency and become a State Environmental Protection activity. For those issues that involve more than one state there could be quarterly meetings of all state Environmental Protection representatives.
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Post by icefisher on Dec 7, 2013 14:50:30 GMT
I don't want the EPA shut down, but I do want the EPA to use sensible rules based on SCIENCE. Not wishful thinking. The EPA should be shut down as a Federal Agency and become a State Environmental Protection activity. For those issues that involve more than one state there could be quarterly meetings of all state Environmental Protection representatives. It would still be necessary for a federal agency to promulgate multi-state regulations. A model could be developed for regional councils made up of state environmental protection agency heads to cover watersheds and air pollution districts and suggest federal regulations for the region that involve more than one state. Regional fishery management councils were formed in the 1970's to recommend fishery regulations affecting fish stocks of interest to multiple states and could serve as a model. Further it could serve politically to align those who would like the EPA to just disappear with those that see that the EPA has some value. Its really a travesty when some bureaucrat at a desk in some Washington DC tomb decides the economic fate of people thousands of miles away without so much as a phone call. A regional council with transparent deliberations and public testimony in the process of developing proposed regulations (not just as a response to already developed regulations) would go a long ways toward protecting our freedoms from fiat while at the same time providing adequate oversight of the environment.
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Post by nautonnier on Dec 7, 2013 19:01:01 GMT
I don't want the EPA shutdown either but your idea is interesting. The problem is the way the EPA works. An analogy: It is important that drains are kept clean in premises. Dirty and insanitary drains can spread infections with possible n000 people sickened every year. Therefore, we need a regulation that drains should be cleaned and disinfected to reduce the number of illnesses and some deaths from bad drains. [most people agree]. After 5 years all drains are clean, bureaucrat inspectors may be out of a job. Therefore, it is claimed that people can still be sickened even by cleaned drains which still harbor bacteria (crudomycese) which is very dangerous. Our drain regulation will now require that drains must be sterilized and be kept sterile to prevent all these unnecessary illnesses. Of course it also means the drains cannot be used for their intended purpose - but the EPA logic is that this saves the people otherwise hazarded. This is the standard path of EPA regulations for example particulates (PM-n) where the amount allowed is reduced and the application of the regulation is expanded until it is illegal to have a dusty field. In Virginia they were chasing farmers for storm water run off calling it pollution and muddy transient puddles were called 'protected wetlands'. Now McAuliffe is their governor those farmers are toast. So no - I do not support the EPA.
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Post by sigurdur on Dec 7, 2013 23:09:28 GMT
Nautonnier:
Your comment in ref to the storm runoff is a valid one. The newest thing that is coming down the pipeline is to have a cement pad to fill sprayers. Cement pads are NOT portable, and to think that filling a sprayer is a hazard is nuts. I bet I don't spill a gallon per year in regards to the sprayer. And I use 100's of thousands of gallons of water.
And I am not different than any other farmer. They had a hairbrained idea last year that they wanted farmers to get permits to spray a field. Can you imagine this? Who is going to be up at 4:00 am to grant a permit?
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Post by cuttydyer on Dec 12, 2013 10:13:12 GMT
An increase in solar activity; could this be the peak of the 2nd peak of cycle 24? "While the Sun is in a C-flaring mood, the probability for M-flaring activity is estimated around 40%. There are 9 active regions on the solar disk. Several of them are magnetically connected. NOAA AR 1922 (Catania 74) has grown from nothing to a beta-gamma configuration. A recurrent large coronal hole in the northern hemisphere reached the central meridian. It caused previous rotation a Kp of 4. Geomagnetic disturbances are expected on December 14."
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Post by nautonnier on Dec 12, 2013 14:28:48 GMT
Well the Sun might be busy but I don't see evidence of that in the Solar Wind metrics...
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Post by Pooh on Dec 13, 2013 4:54:12 GMT
I don't want the EPA shutdown either but your idea is interesting. No need to shut it down entirely. Amend the Clean Air Act. Remove the reference to Greenhouse gasses; replace by a list. Omit CO2. Delete regulations controlling fossil fuels. Let the busy beavers regulating fossil fuels find other work outside Federal employment. Use the savings to decrease the national debt.
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Post by granpisco on Dec 13, 2013 14:24:14 GMT
Under the current regime EPA is moving faster and on multiple fronts to promulgate as many new regulations (read Laws) as possible. Bureaucrats issue regulations, guidelines and comments and suggestions--in reality all have the force of law. EPA knows that their regulations/programs are mostly adopted wholesale by the states' counterpart. States are able to enact more stringent regs than EPA issues, California behaves in this manner. However, if they want a different approach they must spend big money to prove it works. The federal courts arbitrate these squabbles; so who do you thinks wins?
Unfortunately, EPA is the ultimate political tool today, followed closely by Justice, Homeland Security and Health & HS. All of these agencys are fighting to regulate and control every facet of our lives. The future is approaching fast and you won't like it!
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Post by trbixler on Dec 14, 2013 3:25:51 GMT
Anyone ever think that maybe the sun has something to do with the current climate? Of course Leif tells us that the TSI does not change much, funny how Dalton and Maunder were at solar lows. "Sun's Current Solar Activity Cycle Is Weakest in a Century" " SAN FRANCISCO — The sun's current space-weather cycle is the most anemic in 100 years, scientists say. Our star is now at "solar maximum," the peak phase of its 11-year activity cycle. But this solar max is weak, and the overall current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, conjures up comparisons to the famously feeble Solar Cycle 14 in the early 1900s, researchers said. "None of us alive have ever seen such a weak cycle. So we will learn something," Leif Svalgaard of Stanford University told reporters here today (Dec. 11) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union." link
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Post by duwayne on Dec 14, 2013 14:09:05 GMT
A 4 person panel of solar experts at the AGU meeting discussed the current small Solar Cycle. Dr Svalgaard was one of the participants. In response to a question about the possible effect of low Solar cycles on the earth's climate, the answer was that there would be no effect. The effect would be in the thermosphere where milliwatts per square meter matter not on the earths surface where hundreds of watts per square meter are necessary for change. I was surprised at the level of certainty and apparent harmony (by lack of disagreement) with respect to global warming. Svalgaard noted the 100-year cycle apparent recently in Solar activitivy but he opined that this was probably due to chance. Here's a video of the presentation. link
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Post by trbixler on Dec 14, 2013 15:57:44 GMT
What medieval warm period, Oh! "Study: Earth was warmer in Roman, Medieval times" "Kullman also wrote that “summer temperatures during the early Holocene thermal optimum may have been 2.3°C higher than present.” The “Holocene thermal optimum was a warm period that occurred between 9,000 and 5,000 years ago. This warm period was followed by a gradual cooling period.”" "The Kullman study points to mounting evidence that climate is largely out of human control, as humans were not burning large amounts fossil fuels during Roman and Medieval times. Some scientists have pointed to solar activity as the predictor of where global temperatures are headed. Researchers have pointed to falling sunspot activity as evidence that the planet will cool off in the coming decades." link
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Post by nautonnier on Dec 14, 2013 18:02:53 GMT
A 4 person panel of solar experts at the AGU meeting discussed the current small Solar Cycle. Dr Svalgaard was one of the participants. In response to a question about the possible effect of low Solar cycles on the earth's climate, the answer was that there would be no effect. The effect would be in the thermosphere where milliwatts per square meter matter not on the earths surface where hundreds of watts per square meter are necessary for change. I was surprised at the level of certainty and apparent harmony (by lack of disagreement) with respect to global warming. Svalgaard noted the 100-year cycle apparent recently in Solar activitivy but he opined that this was probably due to chance. Here's a video of the presentation. linkLeif spends his time ambushing threads on WUWT saying repeatedly that the Sun has almost no effect on climate, that there is no tidal effect of planets on the Sun, that the Sun (unlike all other stars with planets) is not affected by the planets and thus orbiting a barycenter, but rather it continues in 'free fall' completely unaffected and unchanging by the pull of Jupiter and Saturn... At the same time he appears to be one of the few scientists who correctly forecast the low SC24 while the delivered wisdom from Hathaway and others was that SC24 would be even more active than SC23.
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Post by sigurdur on Dec 14, 2013 21:39:45 GMT
Lief is no slouch, but I question the variation of UV and the effect on the Jet Streams.
While the wattage may not change much, the cause/effect may provide for a larger change than he is familiar with.
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Post by icefisher on Dec 16, 2013 4:03:35 GMT
Leif was also one of the scientists that participated in the blog that was going to refute Gerlich and Tscheuschner that ended up with none of the warmist scientists being able to agree on the details of how the greenhouse effect works. Kind of hard to establish it if nobody knows how it works.
Indeed the wattage variance of the sun is probably inadequate to explain natural climate variation. But water is a wonderful substance that science still has much to learn about and is known to dramatically vary the lapse rate.
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Post by cuttydyer on Dec 16, 2013 12:58:59 GMT
New paper describes another solar amplification mechanism via cosmic rays: This new paper (published today in Advances in Space Research) finds another solar amplification mechanism by which small changes in solar activity and cosmic rays affect atmospheric pressure, and cyclone & anticyclone activity. Abstract Changes of troposphere pressure associated with short-time variations of galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) taking place in the Northern hemisphere’s cold months (October-March) were analyzed for the period 1980-2006, NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data being used. Noticeable pressure variations during Forbush decreases of GCRs were revealed at extratropical latitudes of both hemispheres. The maxima of pressure increase were observed on the 3rd-4th days after the event onsets over Northern Europe and the European part of Russia in the Northern hemisphere, as well as on the 4th-5th days over the eastern part of the South Atlantic opposite to Queen Maud Land and over the d’Urville Sea in the Southern Ocean. According to the weather chart analysis, the observed pressure growth, as a rule, results from the weakening of cyclones and intensification of anticyclone development in these areas. The presented results suggest that cosmic ray variations may influence the evolution of extratropical baric systems and play an important role in solar-terrestrial relationships. Paper link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117713007606Schtick link: hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/new-paper-describes-another-solar.html
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