Rats

After reading through the links, it seems that the court is implying that CO2 is considered to be a pollutant. I guess it is in a way, but it leads me to ask the question of how soon before the EPA, in its' honorable desire to protect all things natural, places limits on those who respire?

Maybe the AGW'ers are right, this issue may result in a massive loss of life.

Cool! TAX THE JOGGERS! Their heavy breathing while excercising is causing too much CO2 in the air!!

Now I'll duck and run!

Dave, Don't hold your breath.

It's inevitable, we will soon be paying a tax to justify our existence but right now we are just talking about auto emmisions. What worrys me is that they are trying to classify CO2 as a pollutant. Those poor plants

An increase in dry bulb temperature does not necessarily mean an increase in the amount of heat contained in the air. Politicos are intentionally lead to believe otherwise.

Well, radiation is natural, do you not want government regulations limiting radiation exposure to the public simply because it's...natural?

"Maybe the AGW'ers are right, this issue may result in a massive loss of life."
More like a massive loss of money out of all our pockets...for a man-made fantasy. How could they be so stupid? Then again, judges aren't the sharpest tool in the shed.

The science is settled, and the Supreme Court said so.

Will they regulate the emissions of CO2 & other greenhouse gases spewing from Al Gore's private jet? What about the emissions from the limousines of "green" Hollywood celebrities or other fat cat politicians who preach the tiresome "do as I say, not as I do"?

Won't take long before we see just how much this regulation is really about protecting(and protracting) the divide between the Haves(who can buy "our" politicians) and the Have Nots.

How long before congress introduces a bill for a "respiratory tax"? As per the norm of this court, they have over stepped their boundary again. This whole thing is getting way out of hand. People better start telling the truth on global warming or we will all end up in tents, riding bikes.

This is getting ridiculous. That's what I was joking about before. We all need to take less breathes because we are polluting. Ughhh, so frustrating. Now Belgium is imposing taxes on BBQ. I also joked about this. I know these people like the back of my hand. Crazy.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070403/62999935.html

BRUSSELS, April 3 (RIA Novosti) - The government of Belgium's French-speaking region of Wallonia, which has a population of about 4 million, has approved a tax on barbequing, local media reported.

Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is emitted during barbequing. Beginning June 2007, residents of Wallonia will have to pay 20 euros for a grilling session.

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

Scientists believe CO2 emissions are a major cause of global warming. End.

And paying 20 Euros is going to help stop emission how exactly? And flying helicopters doesn't emit any CO2, right? I just have to shake my head and laugh.

This 5-4 decision is laughable. First, litigants should have had to prove injury resulting from EPA's refusal to include CO2 emissions from automobiles as pollutants. Are there "victims" of increased levels of CO2 who have suffered harm from breathing air "polluted" by CO2 from cars? If so, who are they and where is the proof that any injury occurred. And where is the evidence that CO2 is harmful?

Mass., and the other states joining them are, once again, legislating via the courts. They cannot win these battles in congress so they sue in federal court in the hopes that they can persuade 5 justices to their way of thinking. It's a lot easier to convince 5 than a majority of 535 legislators in congress. This isn't "governemnt of the people, by the people or for the people." This is government by judicial decree.

Exactly. Basically they are saying that breathing is pollution. I wonder when one of these news outlets is going to bring up the numbers on CO2. Nature produces 30x more CO2 than man, and that the number 1 greenhouse gas contributing to global warming is NOT CO2, but water vapor. Just google water vapor and global warming.

How could they be so stupid? Then again, judges aren't the sharpest tool in the shed.

Who do you consider intelligent in that case? Certainly not the people on this blog that seem to think respiration adds new CO2 to the atmosphere.

Look at all this paranoia and fear-mongering exhibited by the right-wingers here. No, we're not going to be living in tents and riding bikes, nor are we going to be taxed for breathing. Nice try at scaring people though. You guys are good at it.

Aaron:

ssssssssh! keep the real truth about that evil substance water vapor a secret cause if "they" find out about it, "they'll" try to take our liquid water away because I'm figuring "they'll" eventually figure out where all the vapor comes from.

Think of the public relations hit that Dasani is gonna take when it comes out that they are a major contributor to the "biggest" problem on the planet.

Great point though really!

Hmm...and the funny thing is if CO2 is so bad for us and the earth that it's going to cause "dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria"....why did my recent health check up reveal that I was C02 deprived?????

NEW C02?

Within the alveolar system of the lungs, molecules of oxygen and carbon dioxide are passively exchanged, by diffusion, between the gaseous environment and the blood. Thus, the respiratory system facilitates oxygenation of the blood with a concomitant removal of carbon dioxide and other gaseous metabolic wastes from the circulation.

I would take this to mean that CO2 is removed from our metabolic system, thus we create CO2 when we exhale

Mark:

LOL, skeptics fear mongering. And we're good at it, right...nothing like comparing taxes to say, oh, massive loss of human life due to rampant flooding, bigger stronger hurricanes, or maybe a hollywood movie showing NYC with a ship gliding down a road. That's darn near the funniest thing I've read since BT stated emphatically that SUVs are popular due to the desire of the Reagan administration to destroy the environment by allowing mileage requirements to be less for the SUV.

And by the way, why do you assume that those making light of this odd decision are "right-wingers". Why label? Why accuse? I believe that most of us "non-believers" are using humor to lessen the lack of reason shown by a segment of the world.

Julie:

I have to know, what did they mean that you are CO2 deprived? I've never heard that before.

Mark,

Your missing the point
We, so called 'Right Wingers', are pointing out the absurdity of the AGW scare by being absurd.

C,mon use your brain. Taxing, Bar-b-ques. then sending helecopters up to make sure there are no unouthorized bar-b-ques going on.

And as far as your comments on radiation is concerned, your comparing theory AGW to over exposure to Isotopes.

I have one question can we regulate the Sun?

Oh I forgot about the reflective mirror some moonbats want to put up in space to reduce AGW
see: http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18175/

Interestingly the Court did articulate a "harm" in the form of climate change and stated that "[t]hat these changes are widely shared does not minimize Massachusetts� interest in the outcome of this litigation." Ok, there's the "harm." See p. 6

The thing that the media missed and left me shaking my head is how the Court ruled. It didn't order the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide; it did tell the EPA that if it was not going to regulate carbon dioxide it must articulate the reason it not going to regulate carbon dioxide; e.g. "...the scientific uncertainty is so profound that it precludes EPA from making a reasoned judgment, it must say so." See p. 5. The result: EPA must go back and review its findings on carbon dioxide and must articulate a valid reason; not an arbitrary one, why carbon dioxide should or should not be regulated.

The point is, EPA could do its review and still find that carbon dioxide should not be regualted given that the scientific basis for its role in climate change is uncertain or for some other valid reason.

This is only the beginning boys and girls; when the issue of climate change is put in to the legal system the one thing that comes to mind is "Abandon Hope All You Who Enter Here."

By the way, the link to the opinion that I cited pages to is here: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf.

The opinion of the majority is about 6 pages long, but the dissent takes up the remaining 60. I haven't read through the whole opinion yet but I do agree with the dissent that the Court should have kept its nose out of this one.

It's late and I'm hungry.

Michael J.

Mark,

I think Al Gore has cornered the market on hysteria and fear-mongering. I think you are throwing stones from glass house.

Knew I couldn't get through this thread without one "right winger" labeling against us, meaning of course(under Mark's logic) anyone that disagrees with this decision is automatically a right wing nut....I mean it can't POSSIBLY be that there are REAL, REGULAR people that are non-political who are just sick and tired of hysteria-driving figureheads like Gore & the majority of the mainstream press prompting fascist, arbitrary, obtrusive & economically-damaging regulations like this by unelected federal bureaucrats based on ASSUMPTIONS. It can't just be that REGULAR PEOPLE are SICK AND TIRED of having our already-meager standards of living put in serious jeopardy by people who enjoy(and have enjoyed) standards of living(or "carbon footprints") tens or hundreds of times higher than ours on average. Anonymous 7:55am makes a VERY good point of just how ridiculous this counter-productive greed based on hysteria can become(flying HELICOPTERS in the sky to monitor OUTDOOR GRILLS????????). How dangerous the consequence of brainwashing & groupthink can be....

The Supreme Court SHOULD have thrown out this case. They really had no legal basis to make this decision if you read what is in the laws. But, since everyone who is a doubter of global warming is told, don't let politics get in the discussion. That is exactly what the Supreme Court did, rather than make a legal decision, they decided this was a case to make their comment heard on global warming. Now nobody wants dirty air but I think this is absolutely appalling that five justices on this court thought their opinions on this subject needed to be heard. An absolutely terrible decision not based on law. But please, if you oppose the global warming position, don't use politics is all I ever hear. I guess I'll use what I have to and that's everything available, politics included because if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander.

This is directed to Mark who has the nerve to say that right wingers are scaring people over this? Please!!! Who is scaring who? We're told by all of these proponents of global warming that the world is coming to end. Now is that fear injection or what? Al Gore was in town at ASU last night. I'm sure he wasn't here to reassure the masses that everything will be just fine. Only if we follow every word he says cause if Al said it, it has to be gospel. What nonsense!!! You guys want to keep politics out of this discussion? Then keep the politics out of it.

Does CO2 really drive global warming?

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/ci/31/special/may01_viewpoint.html

Excerpt:

What the evidence shows
So what we have on the best current evidence is that

global temperatures are currently rising;
the rise is part of a nearly million-year oscillation with the current rise beginning some 25,000 years ago;
the �trip� or bifurcation behavior at the temperature extremes is attributable to the �opening� and �closing� of the Arctic Ocean;
there is no need to invoke CO2 as the source of the current temperature rise;
the dominant source and sink for CO2 are the oceans, accounting for about two-thirds of the exchange, with vegetation as the major secondary source and sink;
if CO2 were the temperature�oscillation source, no mechanism�other than the separately driven temperature (which would then be a circular argument)�has been proposed to account independently for the CO2 rise and fall over a 400,000-year period;
the CO2 contribution to the atmosphere from combustion is within the statistical noise of the major sea and vegetation exchanges, so a priori, it cannot be expected to be statistically significant;
water�as a gas, not a condensate or cloud�is the major radiative absorbing�emitting gas (averaging 95%) in the atmosphere, and not CO2;
determination of the radiation absorption coefficients identifies water as the primary absorber in the 5.6�7.6-�m water band in the 60�80% RH range; and
the absorption coefficients for the CO2 bands at a concentration of 400 ppm are 1 to 2 orders of magnitude too small to be significant even if the CO2 concentrations were doubled.
The outcome is that the conclusions of advocates of the CO2-driver theory are evidently back to front: It�s the temperature that is driving the CO2. If there are flaws in these propositions, I�m listening; but if there are objections, let�s have them with the numbers.

Labels? Oh, you mean like the labels you guys like to throw out, such as Communist-Marxist-Statlinist socialist, anti-capatilist enviro-wackos. Riiiight. Those labels?

There are some 'regular' people who are skeptical of this issue, and you may fall into this category, Darren, but a large majority - say, at least 90 percent - are the same people who opposed cleaning our water and air and land during the 80s. And it's the same fear-mongering we've heard for thirty years. "Ooooh, the economy will collapse if we regulate such-and-such." Well, we've done a lot of regulating since then; we've all seen the benefits of cleaner air and water, and oh, the economy didn't collapse, much to the chagrin of the corporate apologists.

Yet, here we are today, with the same fear-mongering going on predicting an economic collapse if we regulate CO2. Heck, the other day, someone on this blog said we'd have to ration food and ban air travel if we regulate CO2. That kind of alarmism is rampant within the Anti-Environment Right, people who think the market is so fragile that it can't be held accountable for any of their behaviors, else the economy will collapse.

Alan K,

I'm sorry but I have to give a chuckle at your attempt to sound smart while completely missing my point and not understanding basic environmental science.

The point is that CO2 that comes from fuels has been 'dormant' in a manner of speaking for millions of years in the earth's crust. When you take coal, fossil fuel, etc. from the earth and put it into the atmosphere all at once in terms of geologic time, that's a significant increase. Respiration on the other hand is only cycling the same gases that are readily available.

Mark, the difference is we object to(and label) the POLICY based on what it is(or most likely is, or will be), while you & other pro-AGWs label other PEOPLE as "right" & other terms associated with "the right" meant as derogatory & damaging to ANYONE who questions your groupthink....I call it verbal fascism(sorry(not)). Since the left-leaning mainstream press/acedemia/legal system backers(read: people with lots of cash) have made sure that any label associated with the "right"(or those you decide are "right") carries with it extremely damaging connotations(MUCH more so than any counter left labeling(if I decided to do that)) then frankly I don't see the harm in a little labeling of these left-leaning justices who legislate from the bench, even against the best interest of the lower & lower-middle class(read: MOST people in the US), who are going to suffer first & greatest if this decision manifests into widespread regulations beyond rational thought(which unfortunately seems a given with the AGW crowd(that's the only labeling I'll stick to here)).

Ross,

I'm glad I gave you a chuckle, always nice to put a smile on someones face.
I guess my point was that our metabolic process creates new CO2. I put this foreward as an argument to the condecension put forth in your earlier post.
Since you've changed the argument, with fossil fuel burning as an example of CO2 emission I will counter:
I would think that the oceans and large 'rain forest'(jungles) act as carbon sinks and filter the CO2 from out atmospere. Your argument does not change the fact that CO2 should not be considered a pollutant. This is why the state of MA. sued the EPA.

Anonymous,

So what you're saying is your labeling of those who agree with the scientific consensus is more dignified than the perceived labeling by those people of your skeptical views. Ahh yes, the 'enviro-wackos' label is simply criticizing policy and isn't derogatory.

Nice try.

Nobody throws out more labels than the Anti-Environment Right. (I don't say 'skeptics' because the word skeptic implies a healthy dose of impartial, unbiased questioning of something. Most of the so-called skeptics are corporoate apologists with an agenda, and should be called out as such.)

Darren -
I don't know what they meant about being CO2 deprived. It has something to do with not breathing in deeply enough or something like that. All I know is, everyone I work with all had similar readings.

I'm really happy with what the Supreme Court has decided. It should be an example to other countries in the world.

Really? Then what accounts for the rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 from the last century, to levels that haven't been reached for 650,000 years? Surely none of that can be part of the billions of metric tons of CO2 industry has pumped into the air right? Please identify this mystery natural source of CO2 that the oceans and forests failed to absorb, and why this is the case.

More biological units means more ambient co2. During the carboniferous period there was a great burning as oxygen was more abundant and co2 was lacking. The proxy evidence proves that co2 and o2 change as a percentage of volume. This current rise of co2 is human and nature driven. EPA needs to control co2 from tailpipes because the buildup of co2 is unacceptable as a global experiment.

Who cares about human-extracted CO2(fossil fuels) vs. "nature-occurring"....it all comes from the earth, therefore everything's natural, and what comes from the earth goes back down eventually, filtered through oceans or land runoff into oceans(where undersea volcanic eruptions are spewing tons more CO2 than we can imagine all the freaking time anyway)....as far as global warming, I'd say it's pretty much a dead issue with the widespread cooling of the Pacific coupled with some of the coldest April weather in almost a century where I live(28 for a high yesterday; cycles anyone???).

Michael J:

Nice post. What the SOCTUS did do was to overstep thier jurisdiction. Only Congress can order the EPA to classify CO2 as a pollutant. It matters not what the IPCC, NOAA, GISS, WMO says, but what Congress mandates. This case is about jurisdiction. Evidently, the Mass Govenor or AG couldn't get the Senate or House oversight committees to see things thier way (Mass is worried about AGW induced sea rises), and took matters to the court. When I heard that SCOTUS took the case last year, I knew this ruling would come about. Why grant cert if you do not intend to change some law? We have now new precedent. The SCOTUS can rule on matters far outside thier jurisdiction and expertise. They could have only come to thier conclusion by taking sides in the AGW debate -that is they are acting as legislators.

"where undersea volcanic eruptions are spewing tons more CO2 than we can imagine all the freaking time anyway"

Yet another MYTH spread by those who haven't done their research. If you actually did do your research, you'll know that humans produce roughly 150 times the amount CO2 than is produced by all volcanos around the world every year.

If volcanos produced more CO2 than humans, we would see a massive spike in CO2 levels with every eruption. We never see that. Instead, we see a nearly linear increase in CO2 levels starting from the Industrial Age.

Isn't there other greenhouse gases out there that are much much worse than CO2. I didn't think the atmosphere was just comprised of CO2. Couldn't there be something out there? Is the government going to fine a volcano everytime it erupts?

"If volcanos produced more CO2 than humans, we would see a massive spike in CO2 levels with every eruption. We never see that."

Obviously you also didn't see the massive-scale climate change Mt. Pinatubo alone caused(since it's now "climate change", NOT "global warming" the back-peddlers at the UN are now warning us about)...

Anonymous - Mt. Pinatubo cooled the Earth (briefly) the becuase of the sulfur dioxide gases it emitted those go up in the atmosphere, combine with water and become sulfuric acid aerosols. Those aerosols are so tiny they stay in the atmosphere for as long as 3 to 4 years. See this reference:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Volcano/

As for volcanoes and carbon dioxide, 5 minutes of research found this page:
http://volcanology.geol.ucsb.edu/gas.htm
with this quote:

Volcanoes contribute about 110 million tons of carbon dioxide per year while man's activities contribute about 10 billion tons per year.

"Volcanoes contribute about 110 million tons of carbon dioxide per year while man's activities contribute about 10 billion tons per year."

Then let's all kill the big bad Evil White Male. I give up.

I truly despise when big numbers are thrown about in this discussion. This is because a relatively few people can grasp what an incredible small number 10 billion tons is over the earth. Sounds like a lot and it must be devastating. All those tons doing their dirty work. But...

If you run a little math it works out to roughly .003 pounds of CO2 over every square foot of the planet. Disperse that over a column of air say what, Laura, 200,000 feet in elevation and it is .000000015 pounds per cubic foot. I know, that still is a big number of CO2 molecules/FT3 but it sure sounds a lot less of a problem.

This brings up a point I made some time ago. 400 PPM means that only .04% is CO2, seems like most radiation would escape a sieve if only .04% is blocked. I know, I know there are other constituents but we are dicussing CO2 in this case. Point is that the only reason CO2 is discussed because man produces it burning fossil fuels and it happens to have a heat retaining capability.

Why even take our opinions then Laura, since you have to play Last Word? Your links must be unquestionable, the pro AGWs know it all(they CAN'T be wrong). I only posted here because I felt I had to defend myself & my welfare from this LUNACY by the Supreme Court of my so-called FREE COUNTRY. I shouldn't have to back up expressing my right to freedom with scientific expertize......short of killing ourselves there's not a damn thing we can do to stop GW, climate change, or whatever the hell they want to call it next week. I am done. I guess it just doesn't matter if all my rights are taken away from me because I am NOTHING BUT EVIL.

Anonymous - That's quite a leap. Certainly nothing advocated here. I just get frustrated when people come here and post information as factual that's just flat wrong.

Darren, thank you for deflating that Big Bad Scary Number. Other than that, I'll just let the skeptics(like yourself) who can present science & math(2 things I'm admittedly terrible at, yet are central to GW) do the talking. Months of reading this blog & being likened to holocaust deniers, religious nuts, corporate apologists, the ultra right & other degrading garbage has pushed me beyond the desire to engage in these discussions civilly.

Mark,

For the record, the government does not regulate "natural" aka background radiation. They only regulate man made sources.