Spazz, he was saying the Constitution prevents the President from having the kind of power people insinuate by saying he is holding us back. On a side note, that's not a misconceptions. The right to bare arms means owning weapons and at the time it was written that meant guns and really big knives.

Back on topic: Humans are not causing global warming, we are adding to it. Ice from the North Pole contained samples that could be used to measure the atmosphere in the distant past and what they have found indicates that the earth is comming out of the last Ice Age. The patern shows that we are due for a tropical age, like the dinosaurs enjoyed. That means the world is going to be warming up anyway, all our greenhouse gasses are doing is slightly, slightly speeding up the process. Besides, we can't do anything to save or destroy the world. Only human arrogance says that we could. No matter what humans do, even a nuclear holocast, would mearly damage the planet, killing off millions of species of living things. But the world would continue and thrive. What we can do is save ourselves.

Edit: The previous post was added between when I read and when I posted, so here's my addendum.

We aren't abstaining. The companies that are most threatened by the alternative changes are buying up the technology to maintain their current status quo and have the major advantange in the new market when resource shortage forces the change. I have no doubt they are developing the technology to a point in effeciancy that would be quite comprible to the current gas guzzlers so that when, not if, the change happens people don't feel like it's a setback in conviences ('cause God forbid I should be inconvienced for the betterment of all mankind). Look what happened a few years back when the prices first shot up to where they are now. Suddenly there was a quite reliable and economic(ish) Hybrid gas-electric. Whereas less that one year earlier they were saying reliable cars that utilize any form of electic power were still an inefficiant pipedream.

I have a problem with people saying that global warming is going to destroy the Earth. Let's look at this Scientifically. When we speak of global warming we are only talking of a rise in average temperature of about 3 degrees. The last time this happened we entered an agricultural boom. Plants tend to thrive upon the warmer air. Since when is this a bad thing?
Secondly there isn't going to be any major flooding. Here's an experiment. Take a glass of water and put ice in it so that it is floating (don't let it touch the bottom.) Now mark the water level. Let the glass sit till the ice melts. Check the water level. Did it rise? No, because the ice displaced the same volume of water keeping the level the same. At most if the ice caps were to completely melt, you would only see a rise in the water levels of around a few yards. Not exactly flooding now is it?

There are several flaws involved in the arguments proposed here.

First the president does have the power to affect the national platform on environmental concerns on many levels. Most directly he was the one who decided to reject the Kyoto accord. Furthermore he based his national policy on environmental restrictions on two main points. First he described our current system of rampant consumption as a “blessed way of life” worth protecting. Secondly his position on environmental controls is based on the proposition that industry will police its self. Within his first year he loosened over fifty environmental restrictions, some of which had been in place since the seventies. And who can forget the whole ANWAR issue.

Arguing that humanity lacks the capability to affect the environment demonstrates ignorance towards the science of global warming. We are unbalancing a system by reintroducing carbon into the system that has been out for millennia. The amount we reintroduce is sufficient to unbalance the system.

And the ice cube experiment is a little flawed. This children’s website demonstrates how. http://science.howstuffworks.com/question473.htm

I was refering to the checks and balances system. You blamed the president for the failure to act. I said that, constitutionaly, the checks and balances system puts that sort of thing in the hands of, not the president, but the congress.

Please excuse me if I assumed that you had basic knowlage of our government system.

Actually one of the roles of the President is "Chief Economic Planner." So he does have more control over it then you seem to think Dynamite. And I'd recommend not insulting other people's knowledge on a subject when you too are misguided...
To the original direction this thread took, it'll be a looooong time before anyone really "act's" on the issue of global warming. Many companies are trying to create more environmentally friendly products(such as the Nissan Hybrid, it is Nissan that has that right? oh well, w/e), but getting them into the mainstream is hard. Sure some people will buy it, but not everyone can afford it. If the U.S. were to pass a law saying that there can be no cars that get less than 50 miles to the gallon (which in itself is a hell of a feat), then they would also have to give everyone who has a car a car that meets these requirements, and then people's greed would kick in and they'd have to give the people who already had a car that got 50 mpg, money to compinsate for teh fact that they weren't given a free gift... Even assuming that each car only costs $20k, and if we only did it for people who are 18 years or older, then using the 2000 census we'd be spending about $5,798,340,940,000 I mean, I know Bush can't keep track of money and has bankrupt everything he's ever touched save the Texas government, I don't think even he's dumb enough to spend that kind of money... it's just not feasible.

If you're going to be that way about it...
 

Going off topic for a moment, that, if it's even true, is not a constatutional position. It is, if anything, an informal position that has nothing to do with how the government actualy handles such things. This subject and related subjects are handled by the congress, more specificly the senate. If you don't believe me, then read the damn thing. I'm holding a copy of it as I type this just for you, since you decided to be that way about it, though I admit I deserved it.

Back on topic, maybe it will cost more to worry about it later, but if a company eats up all its profits on an investment that won't mature quickly enough to bring that money back in in a timely fassion, then the company goes bankrupt and folds up. Then they stop making any kind of cars, environmentaly friendly or no, and they take their jobs with them. Waiting means economic disaster when the problem strikes, but doing it now means economic disaster now and with troops overseas, weather we like it or not, we just can't afford it.

As for the government helping out, this is simply not a government job. My motto is, if the government has to get involved then it is already ruined beyond repair and should be scrapped and started from scratch. If the government has to get involved here, then we're all in one hell of a lot of trouble.

That actually proved my point. It stated that if the Ice caps did completely melt (which is highly unlikely) the water would only rise about 70 meters. That's not exactly global flooding. So why are we stressing?

Seventy meters is enough to flood a lot of places. For instance, nearly all of Florida would be two hundred plus feet underwater. The big coastal cities around the globe - gone. A huge bay where the Netherlands, Belgium, and parts of Germany used to be.

Of course, this is worst-case scenario, but even just a few meters of ocean rise would have a big impact on anyone living near a coastline. Also, it would disrupt ocean currents leading to weather pattern changes, like some sort of super El Nino. So the effects could be felt even if you live on a mountain range due to the shifting equilibrium of weather.

If I remember correctly, the government (which is headed by Bush, fyi) is helping fund research for cheaper models of cars using hydrogen powered cells. We already have a prototype, but it costs something like $3 million to make. The research is being done to cheapen the process and have cars out by 2020. So they're not just sitting on their asses waiting for a catastrophe before finding new renewable resources. They are actively persuing them now.

Other than that, I would say that the new hybrid cars are a step in the right direction. God bless the Japanese for taking the initiative on this matter and forcing the American companies to compete in this new market.


But I do agree that the oil industry does not want any alternative power sources out there. They should just adapt and take the pioneering road instead of trying to landslide it.

Going a little off-topic...

Frankly, it was rather pointless to sign the Kyoto accord. Bush does have the power to sign such a treaty, but as it is now, the Kyoto accord has a serious flaw in it.

If the US were to sign onto the Kyoto treaty, first they would have to ensure that the economy would not be devastated by the loss of jobs signing such a treaty would require. Even more bothersome to the US, is that those jobs would likely go to nations like India, which do not have any limit to their greenhouse emissions, so that they could maintain their level of production (which would be limited by the treaty in America).

The exact same amount of gas emissions would be present, the only difference would be the locality. India instead of the US.

Does it matter where the gases are being emitted if it's the same volume? Of course not. Because the effect is exactly the same, and thus there is no benefit to the world at large in signing the treaty as it is now.

If the purpose of the treaty is to reduce air polution in the world, it will fail miserably because other nations will not have limits on their greenhouse gas emissions. They wouldn't be reducing the pollution; They'd just be moving it around. And if the purpose of the treaty is made obsolete by the rules of the treaty, then why should we bother signing it, much less weaken our economy for the benefit of another nation at the same time?

The treaty is inherently flawed.

The only thing that would change by the US signing this treaty is that the factories would move to countries who do not have emissions limits. There would be the exact same amount of emissions, only the location of their origin would be different.

So, in terms of the environment, the treaty changes nothing.

For the US to sign the treaty would be moronic because a) it does nothing to help the problem and b) it is detrimental to them.

Are you kidding me? Look at this:

Before flood:
http://www.ilstu.edu/~jrwager/GEO201...rwithscale.gif

After flood:
http://www.ilstu.edu/~jrwager/GEO201...rwithscale.gif

Notice the large chunk taken out of the southeast US. The middle of South America is gone, most of the northern parts of Russia are gone, and northern Europe is devastated. There're some big chunks taken out of china and Austrailia too. I think this is something to stress about.