Drudge will never link to this thread: too likely it would cause his readers' heads to explode.

Hi Matt - I dare you!

McCain's position on global warming might help him out with ordinary, sensible conservatives. Evangelical Christians, however, believe things such as global warming, evolution, geology, astronomy and sexual psychology are all conspiracies put forward by atheistic scientists, and will not let anyone change their minds.

What do you know, we all aren't clear cutting, strip mining, poison milk to school children selling monsters after all. I am a Republican and an environmentalist - it's possible to believe in less government and lower taxes and want to help clean up the mess ALL of us have made, regardless of party affiliation.

I'm amazed at how the press keeps leaving out the name Ron Paul, especially after the second place finish in Nevada.

While lefties only prescribe drastic emission cuts, conservatives should endorse seeding a GMO into the ocean to remove the CO2 from the air.

Soon a warming world will cause carbon sinks to become carbon emitters, not only releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gas that would overwhelm any cuts we made, but reducing nature's ability to remove the CO2 from the air.

John McCain is endorsing a bill to cut our emissions in half by mid-century, when science demands a cut of 80% by 2020. The Bush administration has called that goal "impossible," but the cuts McCain is advocating are going to be too little too late.

Read my blog at www.myspace.com/dobermanmacleod for more information.

Polling by Newt Gingrich indicates that 82% of Americans say man probably causes global warming.

Eh. Who cares? The nuclear winter following the bombing of Iran will have farther reaching effects on the environment anyway.

An overwhelming number of Republicans in the recent South Carolina primary wanted action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution

Perhaps that's because media folks like you keep using nonsense terms like "greenhouse gas pollution" to describe carbon dioxide. People with insufficient science background can be forgiven for being gulled into believing carbon dioxide is a pollutant.

Hi Tom,
Thanks for the link to my story on LOE. I don't want to read too much into recent results (this race has been plenty topsy turvy) but I think it's worth noting that two of the three R candidates with the most primary wins so far are ones who have endorsed the idea of capping greenhouse gases--Huckabee and McCain. Those R's whose campaigns are flagging--Romney and Giuliani--are the ones who would take no mandatory action.
There's a lot more on this at our special page on the 08 race.
http://www.loe.org/features/election2008.htm
Thanks!
Jeff Young
PRI's Living on Earth

Hello, Tom -

So... Courts are now deciding science questions? If CO2 is a pollutant, the earth's atmosphere has been polluted since the beginning.

With any other pollutant, you can take an air sample and distinguish the pollutant from the non-pollutant. How do you do that with carbon dioxide?

I have a lot of respect for the Supremes, but that ruling was scientifically illiterate.

Tim

Tom's response to Tim:

Thanks for the reply. In this case, the court was required to rule on a scientific issue, in that it had to decide whether the clean air act applied to carbon dioxide. Justice Scalia made the obsersation that it's not illogical to consider carbon dioxide a potential pollutant, in that if too much carbon dioxide were pumped into the court's chambers, everyone there would die. My point is that it's legitimate for newspapers to describe it as a pollutant if our government (along with many scientists) also consider it a pollutant.

Tom Pelton

Justice Scalia made the obsersation that it's not illogical to consider carbon dioxide a potential pollutant, in that if too much carbon dioxide were pumped into the court's chambers, everyone there would die.

I would love to know the context of Scalia's comment, especially since he dissented from the majority opinion in Massachusetts v. EPA.

Scalia has been known to mock some of the arguments made to the court. In the actual written dissent, Scalia noted that under the majority's logic:

"It follows that everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence, qualifies as an 'air pollutant'. This reading of the statute defies common sense."

To say that CO2 is not a pollutant because it's been present in the atmosphere since time immemorial is an oversimplification that ignores context.

What is good in one set of circumstances is bad in another set.

For example, nitrogen is an essential nutrient found in fertilizers that farmers use to enrich their soils and improve their crops. That's good. However, if too much nitrogen runs off the farm and into a lake, that can lead to a series of biochemical changes that result in fish die-offs. That's bad. So, is nitrogen a pollutant? In some contexts, yes. In others, no.

The Clean Air Act defines a pollutant as "any physical, chemical, biological, or radioactive substance that is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air." EPA can set standards if it determines that such pollutants could harm public health, welfare, or the environment.

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