Re: Global Warming - a Liberal Scam?, (was Huge study about safety can be misinterpreted by SUV drivers)

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, John S <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>z wrote:
>
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Brent P) wrote in message 
news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>> > In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, z wrote:
>> >
>> > > They are going to move production of CO2 to China? All those
>> > > inefficient old coal-fired power plants are going to China?
>> >
>> > What is better? An old inefficient regulated to be as clean as feasiable
>> > coal power plant in the USA feeding a factory with electricity or a
>> > quick-and-dirty-old-tech-soviet-style coal plant in china feeding a
>> > factory? Which is better for the environment?
>> >
>> > And why do we have old coal plants in the USA? Because any new plants
>> > are opposed on environmental grounds. And new and better means of
>> > generation are opposed on environmental grounds. So what we get
>> > is the status quo. The status quo remains because change is not
>> > possible.
>>
>> Yeah, the old rightwing fantasy factory rides again. Do you recall the
>> Clean Air Act? Do you recall that the power companies piteously pled
>> for and were granted an exemption for their old coal and oil fuelled
>> plants, since the power companies promised that they were going to be
>> all mothballed soon anyway and it would be purely wasteful to upgrade
>> them for the short time they will be in operation? Well, it's thirty
>> years later now, and here in CT, half the electricity is still being
>> produced by those old 'soon to be mothballed' plants, known locally as
>> the Filthy Five. This is not because the utility companies are just
>> dying to build some expensive clean new plants and the
>> environmentalists just won't let them. It's purely because it's much
>> cheaper to run these monstrosities unmodified than it is to build new
>> plants, despite the environmentalists screaming to trade them for
>> clean new plants or else update them. The Reagan and Bush I
>> administrations refused to enforce the part of the Clean Air Act that
>> requires the companies to install upgraded pollution controls if they
>> were doing significant expansions to the plants, in contrast to
>> routine maintenance, allowing the Filthy Five to actually expand their
>> filthy emissions. The Clinton administration finally starts to enforce
>> this provision, and what happens? The Bush junta reverses the
>> enforcement decision. And in response to this boondoggle, the
>> utilities raise their rates 10%.
>
>That's not true at all.  First of all, the Bush I administration SIGNED the 
Clean Air Act
>amendments in 1990 into law, which strenghthened, not weakened the Clean Air 
Act.  Secondly, the
>act was and is being enforced.  The act was designed to require NEW PLANTS 
(new sources) to have
>much more stringent controls with updated technology.  Older plants would be 
initially exempted
>because of common sense economics.  However pollution from these older palnts 
would then be capped
>and traded, so plants pay for their negative externalities (pollution) and 
production is shifted to
>the most efficient (by this I mean less polluting) plants because they are 
cheaper to operate due
>to the cost of pollution credits.  In this way all plants use the most 
advanced pollution controls
>available to them.  Eventually the older plants are shut down or upgraded 
(when they WOULD be
>subject to New Source controls) because they are too expensive to operate or 
they get too old to
>operate anyway.
>
>The problem is that the Clinton administration started treating routine 
maintenance on plants as
>"new source" creation, which was contrary to the actual written law.  

Wrong.  They started treating major modifications as new sources, which was 
exactly what the law allowed (and required).  If during 10 years of routine 
maintenance you replace each part, you've got a new source, yet under your and 
Bush's plan, it'd never trigger the latest pollution controls because you 
replaced it one piece at a time, as part of each year's maintenance.

Treating it this way
>subjected the plants specifically exempted from the statue to the 
requirements of new plants. 

But if the plants get modified instead of just "serviced and cleaned", that's 
precisely what the law intended.  That's why the EPA sued a number of utility 
companies, why a number of them settled, and why the suits continued until 
Bush decided to "reinterpet" the law just this year.


?This
>had the perverse incentive of indicating to plant owners that routine 
maintenance is a BAD IDEA to
>do, because the Government will come after you for doing it. Better to defer 
maintenance and not
>keep plants in the most effiicent manner they can be reasonably operated in.  
 But the effect of
>this is that when routine maintenance and minor upgrades become to expensive 
because of overzealous
>regulation, the effect is that nothing is done and instead the most polluting 
plants are left in
>operation as is, with no improvements all.  The WSJ has reported extensively 
on this, and

The WSJ never met an environmental reg it liked, because it never met a 
corporate profit it didn't want increased.

>specifically about how the Clinton EPA chief was upset that plants were TOO 
CLEAN because they
>needed something to rail against to publicity.  This was all recorded in 
memos.

It was not.

>
>The Bush plan restores the EPA's mandated New Source Review.  But it's easier 
for people to make
>silly attacks on Bush, because they cannot comprehend the actual laws, the 
reason why they were
>written, the actual effects that they have, the effect of enforcing non-laws, 
or what is going on
>in general.


Next you'll be telling us how good Bush is for the environment!  LOL!

>
>------
>"In one famous case, DTE Energy Corp., parent of Detroit Edison Co., tried to 
replace older, less
>efficient propeller blades in several steam turbines at its biggest 
coal-fired plant. The new
>blades were 15% more efficient than the old, meaning they could generate 15% 
more power using the
>same amount of energy--more power, less pollution. But the Clinton EPA 
threatened to invoke New
>Source Review anyway, so the plan was scrapped.
>
>Not that Detroit Edison and others are avoiding heavy pollution-fighting 
expenses. At the very same
>plant, Detroit Edison is spending $650 million to meet new nitrogen oxide 
standards--an expense
>that won't generate a single new kilowatt of electricity.
>
>Bureaucrats, of course, interpret such a rational response to perverse rules 
as a sign of corporate
>greed. So when the Clinton administration found that at least 80% of the 
nation's utilities were
>violating its New Source Review guidelines, it didn't bother to ask whether 
something might be
>wrong with its policies. It simply filed an avalanche of lawsuits demanding 
huge fines.
>
>Yet EPA data clearly show that emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur 
dioxide, the two main
>industrial pollutants, have declined substantially despite a tripling of coal 
usage. Future Clean
>Air targets will reduce emissions a further 50%."  -WSJ 11/26/02
>