Bailing Out a Sinking Ship

It’s been a long month.  The economic nightmare which has been thrust upon us by the criminals on Wall Street is definitely leaving its mark as retirement nest eggs are poached by weasels.  As you most likely know, the idiots in Congress have passed the $700,000,000,000 bailout, and we still see no light at the end of the tunnel.  It’s going to be a tough Christmas this year for the little ones.

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Half of Papua New Guinea Forests Could Vanish

The news just keeps getting better and better:

Half of Papua New Guinea’s forests will be lost or damaged in just over a decade, speeding up local climate change, unless logging is dramatically reduced, a study released Monday found.

The University of Papua New Guinea report, which used satellite images to show the loss in forest cover between 1972 and 2002, found that at current rates, 53 percent of forest was at risk of being destroyed by 2021.

Read the full article here: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/06/02/new-guinea-forest.html

It still amazes me, after all of the data that comes from the scientific community, that people can even begin to question that Global Warming is a serious threat.  Or that they question whether or not humans have accelerated it!  It’s pretty obvious to me (and most of the credible scientific community) that humans have accelerated Global Warming through any number of activities…  like deforestation, for example.

Clean-air rules for national parks may be eased

This is just the sort of thing that really upsets me:

Scientists, managers oppose plan that may allow for new power plants

The rewriting of air-quality rules would ease the way for the construction of 33 coal-fired power plants within 186 miles of 10 national parks, including Great Smokey Mountains, left, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24658362/

Here’s some interesting facts I dug up…

• China’s Ministry of Health says pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death.

• Only 1 percent of China’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union.

• Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

• According to the Journal of Geophysical Research, much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China.

Much of the pollution in China is a result of their energy demands, which are primarily answered with coal fired power plants. The effects of China’s pollution have worldwide reach, and will for many years to come. Keeping this in mind, why in the name of all that is sacred, would we even consider relaxing Clean Air protections?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26china.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/oct/31/china.pollution

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070709-china-pollution.html

People never see it coming, when they look the other way.