Signs of a Warming World? Drought Threatens 121,000 in South China

On Mar 26, 4:59 pm, Joe Fischer <j...@BigScreenComputers.com> wrote:

> reduce more warming. Maybe the socialists
> won't have to put me in jail for exceeding my
> carbon allowance.
>
> Joe Fischer

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On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 19:31:44 -0700, john fernbach wrote:

> On Mar 26, 7:53 pm, Bill Ward <b...@REMOVETHISix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:36:45 -0700, john fernbach wrote:
>> > On Mar 26, 4:16 pm, Bill Ward <b...@REMOVETHISix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> >> On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:11:06 -0700, john fernbach wrote:
>> >> > On Mar 26, 2:11 am, Bill Ward <b...@REMOVETHISix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> >> >> On Sun, 25 Mar 2007 20:33:41 -0700, john fernbach wrote:
>> >> >> > RL - You sleek fat cat, you --
>>
>> >> >> > You don't think it would be RASH to read too much while we're
>> >> >> > trying to cope with what AGWers are calling an imminent threat
>> >> >> > to the planet?
>>
>> >> >> > The old intellectual game of "paralysis by analysis," or
>> >> >> > fiddling while Rome burns?
>> >> >> > ---------------------------------------------- And while we're
>> >> >> > speaking about actly rashly or cautiously, would you agree on
>> >> >> > the wisdom of at least holding world fossil fuel production
>> >> >> > constant -- no immediate reductions in CO2 emissions, but no
>> >> >> > more additions, either -- while the scientists hash out the
>> >> >> > details of what's happening?
>>
>> >> >> > Presumably the world's expansion of oil and coal production
>> >> >> > could resume again after a brief hiatus, assuming that we
>> >> >> > eventually find that the droughts, hurricanes, wildfires, and
>> >> >> > glacier melting were all just a false alarm.
>>
>> >> >> Not if the interruption stops the exponential increase in
>> >> >> technology.
>>
>> >> >> Moore's law is our best bet for the future, not Gore's law.
>>
>> >> > Excuse me, Bill W - but does "Moore's law" apply to coal and oil
>> >> > production, now?
>> >> > I don't think so.
>>
>> >> > Everyone in the high tech field knows that it applies to the
>> >> > computing power of microchips.
>>
>> >> > But nobody respectable is trying to make a case that coal burning,
>> >> > for example, is doubling in efficiency every 2 years. Or that
>> >> > Exxon-Mobil is getting twice as many BTUs out of a barrel of oil
>> >> > each two years.
>>
>> >> > Or are you making the case here that there's no real difference
>> >> > between oil & coal & microchips, since they're all brought to us by
>> >> > "free market" capitalism?
>>
>> >> No, that's all yours, John. I was referring to the exponential
>> >> advances in technology that many apparently take for granted, versus
>> >> the stagnation that neo-Luddites are trying to impose.
>>
>> >> Semiconductors and the concomitant information revolution act as a
>> >> multiplier on human effort. If we continue to put our resources into
>> >> technological advances, we can work through our energy requirements
>> >> by increasing efficiency of existing sources and developing more
>> >> non-alternative sources of energy.
>>
>> > Fine - let's do it. In the meantime, let's also endorse the Kyoto
>> > Treaty and follow the EU's example in terms of committing the country
>> > to a massive reduction in CO2 emissions over the next generation.
>>
>> > As I point out below, we can afford to do both. More information
>> > revolution, AND curbs on carbon emissions, AND the development of
>> > better energy efficiency.
>>
>> That's the nice thing about socialism. You can afford anything - just
>> let "rich people" pay for it.
>>
>> >> If we instead squander our resources on bogus AGW repellent, Dan
>> >> Bloomquist will be right, and we'll wind up killing each other off
>> >> fighting over energy. That's why Gore, his AGW Chicken Littles, and
>> >> the faithful parrot squad are so dangerous. There's more at stake
>> >> than just the few gigadollars they're trying to get out of us.
>>
>> > Two Replies:
>>
>> > 1, "Oh, bullshit." It's good (supposedly) to plow more money into
>> > high-tech electronics; THEREFORE it must be bad to put any money into
>> > alternative kinds of energy development, and the conversion of our
>> > civilization to a less energy-wasting mode of operation?
>>
>> > No - dumb argument.
>>
>> > "It's good to enhance our computing power; THEREFORE we can't afford
>> > to keep the polar icecaps from melting and killer droughts and heat
>> > waves from sweeping across California and a goodly chunk of the
>> > Midwest?"
>>
>> You forgot the snarks and boojums.
>>
>> > No. Dumb argument. Wrong.
>>
>> > In a nation as rich as the USA is at the moment, in a society where Al
>> > Gore can afford to maintain his notorious 10,000 square-foot mansion,
>> > in a world where Wall Street fatcats are frantically bidding up the
>> > price of fine art around the world, and investing huge sums in
>> > possible dangerous derivative funds, because they don't have enough
>> > other places to put their money, we can afford BOTH continuing
>> > development of electronics AND the development of a new energy economy
>> > to curb global warming.
>>
>> > Frankly, we can probably afford to do both of these things while also
>> > waging a remarkably stupid and self-destructive war in Iraq, too.
>> > Which of course we're doing, at the cost of what -- $100 billion or
>> > more each year, or is it a lot more than that?
>>
>> > And we will still have more than enough money left over for the big
>> > players among us to spend millions if not billions of dollars each
>> > year on the burgeoning casino industry. Which of course, we're also
>> > doing.
>>
>> > This country can apparently afford the insane Iraq war. And it's
>> > supporting a remarkably healthy and rapidly expanding casino industry.
>> > And it's investing huge sums in the construction of new
>> > "mini-mansions" in the residential housing field, so that the average
>> > American family now has about 2,000 sq feet of space vs. the 500 sq.
>> > feet or so that they enjoyed 30 years ago.
>>
>> > And millions of Americans are now living in two-car or three-car
>> > families, vs. the one car or nothing families that their parents and
>> > grandparents had. And there's so much money going into the
>> > derivatives markets and into private leveraged buyouts of major
>> > corporations that the business writers at Fortune, Business Week and
>> > so forth are starting to worry about it ..
>>
>> > And you're implicitly crying poverty, suggesting that we can't afford
>> > to get the cash together to develop alternative energy sources.
>>
>> Like all socialists, you are always ready to spend rich people's money
>> the way you think it should be spent. What do you do when you run out
>> of "rich" people? It's generally not good strategy for a parasite to
>> kill its host.
>
> I think if you read recent issues of FORTUNE, BUSINESS WEEK, the Wall
> Street Journal, the Economist and so on, you'll find that a lot of the
> rich people are looking forward to spending their own money on the
> development of earth- friendly energy technologies.
>
> Admittedly, some rich people do prefer to invest in pork belly futures,
> or Matisse and Picasso prints, or celebrity memorabilia of the kind that
> Sotheby's likes to sell.

A little envy showing through there?

> And enough rich people are investing in the
> derivatives funds on Wall Street that Wall Street is starting to get
> worried about it, because it's not completely clear that the derivatives
> market is propped up by anything more substantial than air -- air, and
> greed, and hope.

Wall Street's job is to worry. They have the ability to do something
about problems without taking other people's money by force.

> So yeah, as environmentalist -- NOT as a socialist -- I'd encourage the
> US government to use its laws and its power of the purse to create a new
> place for bored rich people to park their money, a place where they
> could earn ungodly profits on energy technologies that are good for the
> planet, instead of having to bet on whether gold and silver prices are
> going to go up or down next year.
>
> But this is not "socialist" of me, Binky. If I were talking about
> "socialist" solutions, I'd talk about expropriating the rich, not
> providing them with an environmentally friendly investment outlet.

How kind of you. But you're not going to do it, you are going to try to
force others to do it for you.

>> > I mean - get real.

Indeed.

>> > 2. Unless we assume that the nation's rich people are in fact quite
>> > poor, and that the annual surveys of high-income folks by FORBES and
>> > FORTUNE are bogus, so that Wall Street and main street are really as
>> > starved for investment capital as you imply, your whole invocation of
>> > Moore's law is just a "non-sequitur," innit?

No, you're beginning to sound a bit looney. Are you sober?

>> > I mean, you make some perfectly logical points about technological
>> > innovation and Moore's Law and all, but they don't have ****all to do
>> > with our civilization reducing its "carbon footprint" to cope with
>> > greenhouse warming and climate change.
>>
>> Get back to me when you have more than just scary prophesies.
>
> Well - we know that you don't believe in the AGW science, as exemplified
> by the IPCC reports, the research done by the National Academy of
> Sciences, etc. etc.

I haven't yet seen anything I would consider good science. Certainly
nothing worth betting the survival of civilization on.
>
> But you're the one making scary prophesies, I think. Prophesies about
> the terrible dangers of "wasting" money on addressing AGW while there's
> all of this high-tech information age development we should be funding.
>>
>> > You've just written, "2 + 2 = 4," and "technology may be good," and
>> > drawn the conclusion: "Therefore Gore is a jerk, and climate change
>> > is not a problem."
>>
>> That's your logic, John, not mine. Get a grip.
> --------------------------
> No - that's your logic, Bill. Assuming you have any logic. You've just
> cited "Moore's Law," which does exist and is important, as a supposed
> reason why the US can't afford to fix CO2 emissions causing global
> climate change.

No, you extended my comment far beyond what I wrote. Go back and read it
in context.

> Hey - why stop at citing Moore's Law? You could try to drag in the Ten
> Commandments, the Analects of Confucius, Boyle's Law, and Harvey's
> historic discoveries about the circulation of the blood in the body.
> They'd be approximately as relevant as Moore's Law.

Sober up a bit, John. Listen to yourself. You are spewing out garbage,
then trying to attribute it to me. Do you seriously think you can get
away with that? You're not fooling anyone but yourself.

>> > This is not intellectually honest, Bill. And it's not a very
>> > interesting lie, either. It's just a non-sequitur. Another damned
>> > red herring.
>>
>> You are right, of course. But you said it, I didn't. And, BTW, you
>> left out "strawman", unless you intended "red herring" to cover it.
>>
>> >Which isn't to say that you're necessarily wrong about some of the
>> >social and economic advances we may get, and to some degree already
>> >are getting, out of the World Wide Web and the whole Silicon Valley
>> >trip.
>>
>> If it weren't for silicon valley, you wouldn't have nearly as many rich
>> people to fleece.

> If it weren't for Silicon Valley, which didn't exist 30 years ago,
> millions of Americans wouldn't have nearly as good places to invest
> their money.
>
> American capitalism basically built Silicon Valley -- well, the genius
> of the people working there had an immense amount to do with it, but American
> capital investment coupled with an entirely new market for computers and
> computer software built Silicon Valley into an economic powerhouse in
> just about a single human generation.
>
> American capitalism and American ingenuity can do the same thing with
> new energy technologies and new energy habits to curb global climate
> change -- IF Americans choose for this to happen.

So now you're Janus - the capitalist-socialist.

> But there will have to be some government involvment, some government
> regulation and steering of the market forces involved. And there will
> have to be some government action to cushion the harsh impact of the
> change on people whose profits and wages and dividends now depend on the
> existing fossil fuel complex.

Ah yes. One must always force the unwashed to do what's good for them.
Just because they made all that money doesn't mean they know what to do
with it. For that they need a socialist with gun in hand to tell them.
>
> With market capitalization of -- just a rough calculation gives you
> approximately $1.5 trillion, which is probably a conservative estimate
> -- today's fossil fuel companies (oil and coal producers mostly) are
> naturally going to fight like hell against the transition to a greener
> energy economy.
>
> In time-honored fashion, the aging dinosaurs are going to try to portray
> new energy technologies as impractical; they're going to accuse everyone
> involved in fostering these new carbon-free energy sources as fools,
> charlatans or "traitors," and they're going to wrap themselves in the
> flag of "free enteprise" and American patriotism as a way of making
> themselves immune to criticism, immune to change.
>
> We can see this happening already, of course -- witness your statements
> about "socialists," which do apply to me, I'm proud to say. But which don't
> have zip to do with most of the American politicians and American
> business leaders who are now increasingly pushing for new ways of
> generating and using energy.

Note who's doing the pushing and why.

>> Also, John, no offense intended, but you do get a tad long winded.

> Oh, gosh. I am so sorry.
>
> Actually I have tried to "densify" my thinking until I'm as "dense" as
> the Fossil Fuel Denialists in here -- in fact I'm aiming for the density
> of neutron star, which still would leave me short of the density
> achieved by Bawana and Keith Rage, the would-be environmentalist killer.

Not your head, your writing. Your head is plenty dense.

> But I keep being expansive despite myself. I'll try to be better in the
> future, honest!
>
> How about if I just chanted mantras in here:
>
> Like "Al Gore!" "Al Gore!" "Al Gore!"
>
> Or "Freemarketfreemarketfreemarketfreemarket .."
>
> If you do this often enough, I'm told, you enter into an indescribable
> mystical state where mere scientific questions seem to disappear, and
> you recognize that human suffering is just an illusion, because
> everything is magically at one, and beautiful.

That sounds like your problem alright. Try listening more and talking
less.

>> I'd appreciate it if you could densify your thought processes a bit.
>> By that I mean spending more time thinking and less time writing.
 
Bill Ward - hmm. You're like most of us: switch the topic or the
focus when the argument isn't going your way.

A few posts back you were implying that it was "dangerous" to plow
money into alternative
energy technologies and other greenhouse gas controls -- because
supposedly, our society
would need the money to invest in "Moore's Law" and microelectronics
instead.

Now you're switiching, and going back to the supposedly unproven
nature of AGW science.

Well, this doesn't address your second point, but I'd just like to
bolster what I was saying in response to your first point -- that
supposedly, there isn't enough investment capital around to handle AGW
and greenhouse warming controls.

Here's a post from last fall, from Market Watch, on the astounding
growth of the derivatives markets in 2006. Market Watch doesn't say
so, but one fact that's driving people to invest huge sums in
derivative funds -- in smoke & mirrors, essentially -- in nothing --
is the relative lack of other promising investment opportunities in
the US and global economies.

In this situation, a good case can be made that if the governments of
the world choose to spend billions or even trillions of dollars on
addressing climate change, they'll be doing the capitalist investors
of the world a favor -- because they'll be creating opportunities for
them to invest in physical production of new goods and new
technologies, instead of artful puffery that's basically empty.

Here's Market Watch on the derivatives situation:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Market Watch authors warns of soaring derivatives market:
"300 trillion in value .. in instruments that are essentially fake"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Thomas Kostigen, MarketWatch
Last Update: 8:15 PM ET Sep 25, 2006

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- The derivatives market has
soared, reaching nearly $300 trillion in value. Considering the total
value of the stock and bond markets combined amounts to only $65
trillion, it's worth wondering how so much extra value can be squeezed
out of instruments that are essentially fake.

Derivatives are priced according to their "notional value" not their
"actual value" because their value is based on the performance of an
underlying financial asset, index or other investment -- in other
words, stocks and bonds.

You would think regulators would be concerned about what's effectively
a hedge of the capital market as a whole. But they aren't. Indeed, new
rules loosen the strictures for pension funds and large institutions
to invest in the derivatives market.

Virtually no one really understands 'derivatives' but if we translate
them into pretty tulip bulbs, it becomes quite clear. These famous
flowers represented value in itself, namely they stood in stead for
gold or property.

So instead of exchanging 'money' issued by the government, people
exchanged tulip bulbs for various properties. If someone wanted to
purchase a house, for example, all they had to do was assemble the
correct type of tulip bulbs and then package them as an 'investment.'

People discovered they could inflate the value of these tulip bulbs to
near infinity. All one had to do was insure the bulb represented the
right color and shape of the promised flower. There was no guarantee a
flower would even grow, it was sufficient to have the PROMISE of a
future flower. Indeed, this was the real lure: once the bulb was
planted, it lost value! Its property for generating financing depended
upon not being realized.

When this collapsed, most fortunes based on tulip potential future
turned to fairy-dust.

Wikipedia tries to explain the present tulip bulb hysteria.

A derivative is a generic term for specific types of investments from
which payoffs over time are derived from the performance of assets
(such as commodities, shares or bonds), interest rates, exchange
rates, or indices (such as a stock market index, consumer price index
(CPI) or an index of weather conditions).

This performance can determine both the amount and the timing of the
payoffs. The diverse range of potential underlying assets and payoff
alternatives leads to a huge range of derivatives contracts available
to be traded in the market. The main types of derivatives are futures,
forwards, options and swaps.

All these instruments were created and used back in 1650. This sort of
'money making' extocathedra is tried over and over again. Governments
have tried to hitch onto such schemes and when they collapse, the
government collapses. Fixing things afterwards usually entails a
horrible depression. The evaporation of money made up out of thin air
by non-government agencies always leads to depressions when money
literally disappears off of many ledgers simultaneously.

Each time this happens, the government 'reforms' investments and tries
to prevent it from reoccuring but always new generations in need for
free money made out of thin air triumph in removing 'stodgy' rules and
controls. So it is today, a total replication of the 1920s . . .

For the rest of the article, click here:
http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/money_matters/2006/09/derivative_fund.html
 
In reply to Bill Ward's implication that the world can't afford to
invest in GW controls, due to
our supposedly urgent need to invest in microelectronics
breakthroughs, here's another
article on the enormous glut of investment capital that's now
troubling world financial markets.

This one is from PriceWaterHouseCoopers, again from late 2006, and
talks about
the implications of "excess" capital investment flows for merger &
acquisition activity.

Again - the obvious question is, couldn't the world's governments and
entrepreneurs,
by creating a whole new energy industry based on green sources,
provide these
investors with something better and less risky to do with their
capital -- rather than
throwing it into fancy asset shuffling that creates no real value for
the world?

Record cash reserves and a desire for growth will accelerate M&A in
2006
24/05/2006. Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Private equity and hedge funds will continue giving corporate buyers
stiff competition - but concerns remain about 'ripple effect' from
automotive's problems, says PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Industry consolidation will intensify in 2006 as corporate and
financial buyers move aggressively to take advantage of high cash
levels, low interest rates and a wide range of opportunities,
according to the Transaction Services group of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
That classic M&A formula follows the pattern begun last year when deal
activity rose sharply as companies strove to lower costs and build
revenue. 2005 witnessed an increase in deal size, as proceeds from
deals involving US companies climbed 25 percent from $654 during the
first three quarters of 2004 to $817 billion, even as deal volume
remained fairly constant.

"Cash available to corporate and financial buyers is at record
levels," said Bob Filek, a Transaction Services partner. "What isn't
spent on stock buybacks and special dividends will likely go to M&A,
as companies struggle to maintain competitiveness in an economy that's
still growing fast. Retail, energy, utilities and technology are well-
positioned for continued strong M&A activity in 2006 and will attract
both strategic and financial buyers."

Filek added, "The only cloud we see at this point is the ripple effect
from the possible restructuring of one of the major automotive
companies. This would hurt the economy, cause a major economic
dislocation--at least in the Midwest--and have a negative impact
across a wide range of industries--not just automotive suppliers,
which employ a lot of people, but steel, capital goods, healthcare,
finance and even consumer durables."

Private equity's share of the domestic M&A market will continue to
expand in 2006. Looking back on the past year, Greg Peterson, Americas
leader of the TS private equity practice, noted that three powerful
trends converged. "First, private equity groups have the clout to
compete with large corporations for virtually any deal they want.
Second, hedge funds have sufficient pools of capital to initiate, co-
invest or compete with private equity funds for deals. And third, the
presence--for the first time in this decade--of an IPO market with
both the sustained strength and industry diversification necessary to
provide a viable exit for portfolio investments, even though direct
sales to strategic buyers remain the preferred exit for most private
equity investors."

Retail, energy, utilities and technology are particularly well-
positioned for sustained M&A activity in 2006, according to Filek and
Peterson.

Retail. Big box retail consolidation, already well advanced, will
continue to accelerate as smaller competitors struggle to adapt.
Private equity will continue to participate, with the twin objectives
of capturing strong cash flow and grabbing attractive real estate.
Grocery chains are likely to be the focus next year as mid-tier
companies struggle to survive in an increasingly competitive
environment.

Energy. 2006 could be the biggest year for energy M&A since the late
'90s, depending on how companies deploy huge cash reserves from record
commodity prices. While integrated oil companies are not likely to do
mega-deals until prices settle, independents will begin increasing
their acquisition activity, if only because they need bigger balance
sheets to offset the risks--both political and geological--of drilling
in those parts of the world where opportunities for bigger projects
exist. In this price environment, any mega-deal is not likely to be
done without simultaneously entering into substantial hedging
contracts.

National oil companies--which play by different rules, get financing
from their governments, and are not afraid to do deals at current
prices--could be the most active players in the mega-deal market, at
least until commodity prices move off record highs. M&A in the
refining sector could also be active in 2006, as sustained high
margins not only trigger possible consolidation among the few pure
refining companies remaining, but also continue making the sector
attractive to private equity firms and foreign companies interested in
buying into the US market.

Utilities. We expect the consolidation of regulated utilities to
continue, yielding a small number of "super regional" companies. While
corporate deal volume may be low, transaction size should be large.
There are several reasons for this:

- The US utility industry remains fragmented, leaving room for
consolidation.

- Ongoing "back-to-basics" strategies have yielded companies with
strong balance sheets, good credit ratings and predictable cash
flows.

- More companies now have the ability to finance acquisitions.

The long awaited repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act
(PUHCA) finally occurred with the passage of the new Energy Act. A key
element of the repeal of PUHCA eliminated the structural barriers that
have historically kept non-regulated utilities from investing in the
sector. The impact of PUHCA's repeal remains to be seen. State
commissions have stepped up their involvement on transactions, with
all stakeholders keeping an eye on how pending regulatory actions
involving several major utility deals are resolved.

Significant deal activity in power generation will also persist, with
private equity and hedge funds continuing to play a major role. Non-
gas fired power plants (i.e., coal and nuclear) may fetch a premium
leading to increased asset sales in this robust market.

Technology. Corporate spending on technology, anemic since Y2K, is
finally rebounding as companies look to replace five-year-old
equipment and aging software. Because customers prefer packaged
solutions to one-off products, technology companies need scale to
remain competitive, and those lacking it are probably good candidates
for divestiture or acquisition. Four trends to watch include:

- Enterprise software consolidation arising from changing customer
behavior and anticipated platform shifts, along with activity from the
sector's two biggest players, as they continue to vie for applications
dominance, and strengthen their offerings in key vertical markets like
retail and financial services.

- "Going private" deals in software and services as private equity
buys mature, out-of-favor businesses with substantial free cash flow
and/or restructuring needs.

- Portals purchasing companies that add functionality and broaden
their range of advertising-funded services, as competition in
interactive media continues to intensify.

- Further consolidation of networking equipment makers as demand
increases and data, voice and video communication continues to
converge.

Although M&A activity should not pick up significantly over current
levels, two other industries worth watching are financial services and
healthcare:

Financial services. On all fronts, the new variable is growing private
equity interest, particularly in banking and insurance service
providers. Although banking deals got off to a slower than expected
start in 2005, deal volume picked up in the second half and continues
at a healthy pace, thanks to strong earnings from higher interest
rates, and the continued strategy of overseas banks to expand their US
markets and product offerings.

In insurance, we expect the following trends in each of the three key
sectors:

- Property & casualty insurers and reinsurers have sustained
significant hurricane losses, but anticipated rate increases have led
to robust capital raising and a number of well capitalized startups.
Consolidation is questionable.

- Among life insurers, an increase in investment yields and, thus,
likely spreads, should fuel improved growth and earnings and a need
for raising capital. Consolidation among companies that don't have
critical mass in all areas of the business is inevitable, and interest
from Canadian and even European investors is a possibility.

- As for agents/brokers, most of the Spitzer-driven activity among
wholesale brokers has ended. But acquisition activity among bank
agencies continues at a modest pace.

Healthcare. Deal pricing is likely to continue at record levels, given
the significant liquidity in the market and the fact that favorable
demographic trends, new technologies and a stable reimbursement
environment continue to make this sector attractive to investors.
Sectors likely to experience strong deal activity include acute care
and psychiatric hospitals, home health, hospice, diagnostic services,
healthcare information technology and managed care. The one wildcard
that could slow the sector down is a regulatory change reducing
reimbursement to healthcare service companies.

Other factors influencing M&A activity in 2006 will include:

Cash glut. Cash available for deployment at the S&P 500 and the top 50
private equity firms totaled $1.9 trillion, an increase of $147
billion or 8.5 percent since the end of last year. This reflects
strong earnings across industry sectors, as well as successful fund
raising efforts by the top private equity firms.

The default rate. With senior debt lending multiples at 4.1x EBITDA,
up from 2.4x in 2002, and total lending approaching 6-7 x EBITDA,
there's plenty of cash to do acquisitions. Typically, banks won't stop
lending until default rates climb, and that hasn't happened. In fact,
both charge-off and delinquency rates on commercial loans continue to
fall and are at their lowest levels of this decade.

A third class of funds. Historically, hedge funds primarily invested
in shorter-term, more liquid exchange-traded opportunities while
private equity did private, long-term control deals. But today, firms
in each group are entering the traditional domain of the other. Some
private equity firms are broadening their investment strategies to
include distressed debt and loan origination. And some hedge funds are
acting like private equity firms, creating "side pockets" to lock up
some of their investors' funds for periods longer than the traditional
hedge fund timeframe, or acting as "shadow investors" by purchasing
equity at auctions where a member of a private consortium wants out
and can't get a bidder at the right price. While we believe these
trends will accelerate in 2006, we don't believe private equity and
hedge funds will merge. Rather, the result will be a third group of
hybrid funds that comprise both liquid and illiquid investments.

More IPOs likely. Big companies will continue to spin off assets to
lower debt, reward shareholders and take out cash, while private
equity firms will prepare portfolio companies acquired in the last
three years for favorable IPO exits. Although the number of non-US
IPOs may increase in late 2006, such activity will be nowhere near the
highs seen in the late 1990's. Sectors with the most IPO activity are
likely to be financial services, technology, energy and biotech. One
twist: Look for more private equity-backed IPOs to be pulled in favor
of sales to strategic buyers, giving investors a more desirable full
exit.

Has China reached a new tipping point? Interest in Asia--especially
China--could accelerate in 2006 as the growth in consumerism, access
to Internet services, higher education, and high quality products meet
continued low labor costs. While Internet and technology companies
will lead the way, the trend will begin spreading across industries.
Strategic and financial buyers will move in to enhance their presence
and make investments related to the 2008 Olympics. But the preferred
transaction structure will be a sourcing arrangement or, in some
cases, an alliance. Not M&A.

Foreign buyers staying home for the most part. The total value of
European acquisitions of US companies more than doubled this year,
rising from $29.3 billion in 2004 to $70.0 billion, despite virtually
no increase in the number of deals. However, this is still well below
the peak of $113.4 billion reached in 2001. European companies and
private equity firms remain focused on attractive deals in their
domestic markets and across Europe, as demonstrated by the fact that
in 2005, Europeans invested more than ten times as much in Europe as
in the US.

However, one European industry bucking this trend is aerospace and
defense, which will continue to witness an increase in cross-border
M&A next year as European companies take advantage of increasing
industry globalization, the US defense budget and a favorable exchange
rate (for as long as it lasts) to pursue growth strategies focused on
US platforms and acquisitions, not only in the defense sector, but
also in commercial aerospace. The proposed relaxation of regulatory
restrictions on investment in US airlines is likely to trigger
investment in this sector.

Asian companies invest seven times as much in other Asian companies as
in the US. However, Asian investments in the US, which have grown
steadily since 2000, tripled to $45.8 billion in 2005. Chinese
companies will continue to pursue US targets that give them access to
well-known brands as well as the technology transfer and natural
resources they need for continued economic growth.

Peterson believes private equity investors will continue to be
aggressive in 2006. "Investors who got active early in the last three-
year cycle are in a good position. For them to hold back on deals and
not deploy their money could be akin to putting themselves out of
business, absent any visible signs that the economy is slowing. Bottom
line, if the next three years are robust and you're not invested,
you'll miss the boat." Peterson added, "What's striking about the
current M&A environment is the level of activity by both financial and
strategic buyers across every single major industry group. The only
exception, at this point, is automotive suppliers, where even the more
aggressive private equity funds have adopted a wait and see stance."

Filek noted that similar catalysts are at work with corporate
acquirers. "Looking ahead, 2006 should be a great year for M&A. The
combination of high cash reserves, readily available debt, and the
imperative to increase revenues while lowering costs is powerful. A
comparison with past M&A cycles suggests we should be leaving the
richest part of the cycle where the best deals are in terms of
returns. Could the 'sweet spot' in this cycle last longer than in
earlier ones, given the growth we continue to see in valuations?
Assuming no drastic change in monetary policy under new Fed chairman
Ben Bernanke, it may. Things are aligned very well right now."

The Transaction Services group of PricewaterhouseCoopers (www.pwc.com/
ustransactionservices) offers a deal process that helps clients bid
smarter, close faster, and realize profits sooner on mergers,
acquisitions, sales and financing transactions. Dedicated deal teams
operate from 16 U.S. cities and some 90 locations in North America,
Latin America, Europe and Asia.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Almeida Capital
AltAssets
http://www.altassets.net/knowledgebank/surveys/2006/nz8619.php
 
Here's another reply to Bill Ward's point about the "dangers" of
supposedly wasting financial resources trying to find a solution to
the "non-problem" of GW, when we need to be putting investment capital
to work on other more productive uses.

The following cite to the Web, this one from March 2007, relates to
the financial risks that some market analysts see in the wave of
merger and investment activity that occurred last year in Europe.
Admittedly this is not the United States or the world -- although
there are capitalist market analysts who are highly concerned about
M&A activity in the USA, too.

But in Europe alone last year, the article below indicates, some $1.8
trillion in US dollars -- that's about $1.35 trillion in Euros -- was
sunk into various corporate mergers and acquisitions. And the
indications are,
most of these M&As aren't working well.

In other words, a lot of this M&A money seems to have been wasted,
useless.

What if the investors behind the M&As in question had instead put
their funds into the "foolish"
area of investing in energy efficiency alternative energy development,
or the redevelopment of
European (or American) cities so as to make them less auto-dependent?
Undoubtedly, some
of the money invested in GW controls would be wasted; some of the
projects wouldn't work.

But for those GW control investments that did work -- for the
alternative energy projects that
were successful -- the investors might have some physical wealth in
their portfolios at the end of the day.
In the case of these unhealthy mergers, they may end up with very
little.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dangerous Liaisons: Hay Group Finds Most European Mergers Fail to
Deliver
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PHILADELPHIA-(Business Wire)-March 26, 2007 - Over 90% of European
corporate mergers and acquisitions fall short of objectives, as
companies struggle to combine corporate cultures or governance
structures, finds a new study from Hay Group. The study reveals that
just 9% of mergers are "completely successful" in achieving their
stated objectives.

The report makes worrying reading in the light of last year's
acquisitions boom, when European deals topped $1.8 trillion (EUR 1.35
trillion, per Thomson Financial).

"The enormous amounts invested in M&A are not delivering their
promised value," said report author David Derain, Hay Group European
M&A Director . . .

For the rest of the article, click here:

http://digital50.com/news/items/BW/...ds-most-european-mergers-fail-to-deliver.html



> read more
 
On 27 Mar 2007 "john fernbach" <fernbach1948@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Here's another reply to Bill Ward's point about the "dangers" of
>supposedly wasting financial resources trying to find a solution to
>the "non-problem" of GW, when we need to be putting investment capital
>to work on other more productive uses.
>
>The following cite to the Web, this one from March 2007, relates to
>the financial risks that some market analysts see in the wave of
>merger and investment activity that occurred last year in Europe.
>Admittedly this is not the United States or the world -- although
>there are capitalist market analysts who are highly concerned about
>M&A activity in the USA, too.
>
>But in Europe alone last year, the article below indicates, some $1.8
>trillion in US dollars -- that's about $1.35 trillion in Euros -- was
>sunk into various corporate mergers and acquisitions. And the
>indications are,
>most of these M&As aren't working well.

Doesn't that amount include the Airbus transaction
of a company wanting desperately wanting to rid itself of
Airbus stock which some of which is owned by socialist
government(s) in Europe?

And if you are counting the losses by Airbus last
the last year or so and maybe this year, that should be
a temporary thing, it was a technology problem, not
an economic problem.

Stay away from any company owned by government.

Joe Fischer
 
On Mar 27, 5:27 pm, Joe Fischer <j...@BigScreenComputers.com> wrote:
> On 27 Mar 2007 "john fernbach" <fernbach1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> >Here's another reply to Bill Ward's point about the "dangers" of
> >supposedly wasting financial resources trying to find a solution to
> >the "non-problem" of GW, when we need to be putting investment capital
> >to work on other more productive uses.
>
> >The following cite to the Web, this one from March 2007, relates to
> >the financial risks that some market analysts see in the wave of
> >merger and investment activity that occurred last year in Europe.
> >Admittedly this is not the United States or the world -- although
> >there are capitalist market analysts who are highly concerned about
> >M&A activity in the USA, too.
>
> >But in Europe alone last year, the article below indicates, some $1.8
> >trillion in US dollars -- that's about $1.35 trillion in Euros -- was
> >sunk into various corporate mergers and acquisitions. And the
> >indications are,
> >most of these M&As aren't working well.
>
> Doesn't that amount include the Airbus transaction
> of a company wanting desperately wanting to rid itself of
> Airbus stock which some of which is owned by socialist
> government(s) in Europe?
>
> And if you are counting the losses by Airbus last
> the last year or so and maybe this year, that should be
> a temporary thing, it was a technology problem, not
> an economic problem.
>
> Stay away from any company owned by government.
>
> Joe Fischer- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Joe -

Is this what drives your whole approach to climate change in this
debate and discussion group?

"Stay away from any company owned by government" ?

Because that doesn't seem to have a damned thing to do with the
climate, actually.

Or with whether we can or can't afford to take actions to curb
greenhouse gas emissions that are affecting the climate.

"Stay away from any company owned by government" is a value statement,
and a value statement devoid of any environmental content.

It's just the mirror image of "Expropriate the capitalists, and smash
the state! Seize the means of production!" which is the slogan of the
more extreme Marxists.

If it's of any interest to you, BTW, last year's merger and
acquisition activity in the United States also hit record levels, and
was duly noted in Business Week and Fortune as having done so.

It ain't just those nasty "socialist" Europeans who have been throwing
huge sums of money into mergers and acquisitions that produce NOTHING
in the way of products for the ordinary consumer.

In the USA in the first three quarters of 2006 alone, something like
$1.7 trillion in M&A activity occured, as big PRIVATELY OWNED
companies gobbled up other big PRIVATELY OWNED companies -- and
produced nothing for the consumer in the process.

The fact is, some CAPITALIST BUSINESS ECONOMISTS, writing for US
business publications, are basically concerned that there's far too
much investment money in the world chasing far too few investment
opportunties. At least among the middle-class and upper-class
consumers who can afford to pay for what they want, the AMERICAN as
well as the European economy is already producing more than enough
"stuff," and that means ambitious capitalists don't have enough
opportunities to invest in making more "stuff."

Result: They're throwing enormous sums of money into Mergers and
Acquisitions, into "leverage buyouts" financed through "junk bonds,"
and into derivative funds that basically don't produce anything, but
just bet on the relationships between different kinds of economic
indices. And this is scaring a number of
contributors to the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, the Economist,
etc. They're worried about another "investment bubble" that's
inevitably going to pop.

Under these circumstances, it makes excellent CAPITALIST sense for
private corporations and the US government to cooperate in launching
new "green" industries that can fix some of our environmental
problems, create new industrial jobs and white-collar jobs for
Americans, and provide new profit opportunities for capitalist
investors.

We saw the private corporations and the US government do this 20-30
years ago with the arrival of the Internet and the whole Silicon
Valley phenomenon. We saw something very similar in the 1950s and the
1960s when the US government and the corporations -- to the dismay of
environmentalists -- cooperated to build the Interstate Highway System
and a hell of a lot of freeways that fostered the growth of the
Detroit car industry and American suburbia.

The government and the corporations can do this kind of private-public
partnership again, and can use it to fix some of our climate problems
-- if we choose to. And private investors should benefit from the
change, not suffer from it.
 
On Mar 27, 2:59 pm, "john fernbach" <fernbach1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Mar 27, 5:27 pm, Joe Fischer <j...@BigScreenComputers.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 27 Mar 2007 "john fernbach" <fernbach1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > >Here's another reply to Bill Ward's point about the "dangers" of
> > >supposedly wasting financial resources trying to find a solution to
> > >the "non-problem" of GW, when we need to be putting investment capital
> > >to work on other more productive uses.
>
> > >The following cite to the Web, this one from March 2007, relates to
> > >the financial risks that some market analysts see in the wave of
> > >merger and investment activity that occurred last year in Europe.
> > >Admittedly this is not the United States or the world -- although
> > >there are capitalist market analysts who are highly concerned about
> > >M&A activity in the USA, too.
>
> > >But in Europe alone last year, the article below indicates, some $1.8
> > >trillion in US dollars -- that's about $1.35 trillion in Euros -- was
> > >sunk into various corporate mergers and acquisitions. And the
> > >indications are,
> > >most of these M&As aren't working well.
>
> > Doesn't that amount include the Airbus transaction
> > of a company wanting desperately wanting to rid itself of
> > Airbus stock which some of which is owned by socialist
> > government(s) in Europe?
>
> > And if you are counting the losses by Airbus last
> > the last year or so and maybe this year, that should be
> > a temporary thing, it was a technology problem, not
> > an economic problem.
>
> > Stay away from any company owned by government.
>
> > Joe Fischer- Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -
>
> Joe -
>
> Is this what drives your whole approach to climate change in this
> debate and discussion group?
>
> "Stay away from any company owned by government" ?
>
> Because that doesn't seem to have a damned thing to do with the
> climate, actually.
>
> Or with whether we can or can't afford to take actions to curb
> greenhouse gas emissions that are affecting the climate.
>
> "Stay away from any company owned by government" is a value statement,
> and a value statement devoid of any environmental content.
>
> It's just the mirror image of "Expropriate the capitalists, and smash
> the state! Seize the means of production!" which is the slogan of the
> more extreme Marxists.
>
> If it's of any interest to you, BTW, last year's merger and
> acquisition activity in the United States also hit record levels, and
> was duly noted in Business Week and Fortune as having done so.
>
> It ain't just those nasty "socialist" Europeans who have been throwing
> huge sums of money into mergers and acquisitions that produce NOTHING
> in the way of products for the ordinary consumer.
>
> In the USA in the first three quarters of 2006 alone, something like
> $1.7 trillion in M&A activity occured, as big PRIVATELY OWNED
> companies gobbled up other big PRIVATELY OWNED companies -- and
> produced nothing for the consumer in the process.
>
> The fact is, some CAPITALIST BUSINESS ECONOMISTS, writing for US
> business publications, are basically concerned that there's far too
> much investment money in the world chasing far too few investment
> opportunties. At least among the middle-class and upper-class
> consumers who can afford to pay for what they want, the AMERICAN as
> well as the European economy is already producing more than enough
> "stuff," and that means ambitious capitalists don't have enough
> opportunities to invest in making more "stuff."
>
> Result: They're throwing enormous sums of money into Mergers and
> Acquisitions, into "leverage buyouts" financed through "junk bonds,"
> and into derivative funds that basically don't produce anything, but
> just bet on the relationships between different kinds of economic
> indices. And this is scaring a number of
> contributors to the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, the Economist,
> etc. They're worried about another "investment bubble" that's
> inevitably going to pop.
>
> Under these circumstances, it makes excellent CAPITALIST sense for
> private corporations and the US government to cooperate in launching
> new "green" industries that can fix some of our environmental
> problems, create new industrial jobs and white-collar jobs for
> Americans, and provide new profit opportunities for capitalist
> investors.
>
> We saw the private corporations and the US government do this 20-30
> years ago with the arrival of the Internet and the whole Silicon
> Valley phenomenon. We saw something very similar in the 1950s and the
> 1960s when the US government and the corporations -- to the dismay of
> environmentalists -- cooperated to build the Interstate Highway System
> and a hell of a lot of freeways that fostered the growth of the
> Detroit car industry and American suburbia.
>
> The government and the corporations can do this kind of private-public
> partnership again, and can use it to fix some of our climate problems
> -- if we choose to. And private investors should benefit from the
> change, not suffer from it.
 
Joe Fischer - Here's another warning on the global glut of savings and
investment that's threatening the international economy, at least
according to this October 2006 report by Bloomberg News.

Please note: Some of the savings glut -- the "EXCESS CASH" described
blow -- is associated with companies owned by governments. But some
is private.

And Bloomberg is saying that the TOTAL amount of cash is a problem --
not that the government owned companies or the privately owned
companies are doing the most to cause the problem.

QUESTION: In a world that's "Awash" in "excess cash," why doesn't it
make economic
and environmental sense to put that "excess" cash to work fixing
global warming?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"MARKETS AROUND THE WORLD ARE AWASH IN EXCESS CASH, FUELING
A FRENZY OF INVESTMENT ...." -- BLOOMBERG NEWS

----------------------------------------------
"FOR THE CENTRAL BANKERS, THE THREAT IS THAT OVERINVESTMENT
PUMPS UP ASSET BUBBLES "
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"AVAILABLE MONEY IS TRIGGERING BARELY PROFITABLE & HIGHLY RISKY
INVESTMENTS"
------------------------------------------------------------

Global Cash Glut Fuels Investment Frenzy, Pushing Up Rates
By John Fraher and Simon Kennedy

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Markets around the world are awash in excess
cash, fueling a frenzy of investment from London to Tokyo that may
lead central banks to push interest rates higher than investors now
anticipate.

Money remains cheaper than in the 1990s even after every major central
bank raised rates this year, the first simultaneous tightening since
2000. The cash glut is reheating the U.K. housing market, while in
Japan companies plan the most investment since 1990. China's biggest
bank this month attracted orders for more than half a trillion dollars
with its initial public offering of shares.

``Interest rates in the main economies have still not been raised
enough,'' says Tim Congdon, visiting fellow at the London School of
Economics and one of the ``wise men'' who advised the U.K. Treasury in
the 1990s.

``There is a buoyancy in asset prices one gets with high-risk monetary
growth.''

Without further tightening, central bankers may have new asset bubbles
and inflation risks on their hands. The European Central Bank, whose
officials voice the most concern, is convening a conference in
Frankfurt next week on the role of money growth in guiding interest
rate policy. Among participants: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S.
Bernanke, People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan and Bank of
Japan Deputy Governor Kazumasa Iwata.

``When monetary growth is strong, the housing markets are very dynamic
and the stock markets are vigorous, the probability of an inflationary
episode within three or four years is very strong,'' says Jose Manuel
Gonzalez-Paramo, a member of the ECB's executive board.

Pressure on ECB

The ECB, unlike other major central banks, explicitly uses money
supply to gauge inflation. Growth of M3, the bank's preferred measure
for the 12 nations sharing the euro, unexpectedly accelerated to 8.5
percent in September, close to a three-year high. That added to
pressure on the bank to add to its five rate increases since early
December.

``It's a bit ironic, given that they are the ones who pay most
attention'' to money supply, says Thomas Mayer, chief European
economist at Deutsche Bank AG in London.

While the ECB will probably leave rates unchanged when its governing
council meets Nov. 2, President Jean-Claude Trichet said earlier this
month that ``liquidity in the euro area is ample by all plausible
measures'' and recommended ``enhanced monitoring'' of money-supply
growth.

`Pretty Lavish'

Charles Dumas of Lombard Street Research Ltd. in London calculates
that money supply in the world's top economies is growing at an annual
rate of 7.5 percent. Though down from a four-year high of 9 percent a
year ago, ``that's still pretty lavish,'' he says.

Tim Drayson, global economist at ABN Amro Holding NV in London, says
major central banks will all have to tighten credit more than
investors now assume.

``Money supply on a global basis is growing quite rapidly as is
overall credit growth,'' says Drayson, a former U.K. Treasury
economist. ``We don't see much evidence that monetary policy around
the world is restrictive.''
Drayson expects the ECB to lift its benchmark rate to 4 percent or
higher by the end of 2007. The Fed's target rate will reach 6 percent,
from 5.25 percent; the Bank of England's will rise to 5.5 percent from
4.75 percent; and the Bank of Japan's will go to 2 percent from 0.25
percent, Drayson forecasts.

Those predictions are at odds with futures trading, which suggest most
central banks won't raise rates much further, if at all, next year.

Revival of Monetarism

Other central banks including the Bank of England and the Bank of
Japan are starting to share the ECB's view on money growth. That's a
shift from a few years ago, when following money supply was deemed a
relic of the 1970s. ``There is something of a revival of monetarism,''
says Stephen Jen, London-based head of global currency research at
Morgan Stanley.

One central bank that isn't joining is the Federal Reserve, which no
longer sets a target for monetary growth and stopped publishing one
measure of money supply in March.

``In the U.S., looking at monetary aggregates has gone out of
fashion,'' says Jim O'Sullivan, senior economist at UBS Securities Llc
in Stamford, Connecticut. ``The Fed responds to the effects of asset
prices, not to the prices themselves.''

For central bankers, the threat is that overinvestment pumps up asset
bubbles that lead to economic busts, just as the explosion of
investment in U.S. technology companies did at the turn of the
decade.

Risky Investments

Available money is encouraging ``barely profitable and highly risky''
investments, French Finance Minister Thierry Breton said last month.
The average interest rate of 10 leading economies adjusted for
inflation is now around 2.8 percent, below the 3.2 percent average of
the 1990s, Morgan Stanley estimates.


The Bank of England, which once shared the Fed's skeptical view of
money supply as a policy guide, is now grappling with the fastest
expansion of money in 16 years. After raising rates a quarter point in
August, citing ``rapid growth'' of cash and credit, Bank of England
officials are signaling a further quarter point increase when they
convene next week.

Average home prices in the U.K. have climbed 2.3 percent since August,
and inflation has topped the bank's 2 percent target for five months.
In an Oct. 10 speech, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King noted
monetary growth had ``picked up.''

Inflationary Pressure

``It is clear the governor is now quite worried,'' says Charles
Goodhart, a professor at the London School of Economics and a former
Bank of England policy maker. ``The rates of monetary growth are
worrying and unless reduced relatively soon will represent a
significant inflationary pressure.''

The Bank of Japan is also keeping a closer eye on liquidity,
concluding a review in March with a pledge to gauge ``longer run''
risks to inflation. Corporate spending is being spurred by an
overnight loan rate of 0.25 percent, the lowest among the Group of
Seven nations.

``A significant increase in capital spending plans could prompt the
bank to raise rates again this year,'' says Takuji Aida, chief
economist for Japan at Barclays Plc in Tokyo.

Cheap cash means China may also be overheating. The country last year
had 118 million tons of excess steel production capacity, more than
the 112 million-ton output of Japan, the world's second-largest
steelmaker.
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. this month completed the
world's biggest initial public offering, raising $19.1 billion and
attracting more than $500 billion in orders, equivalent to twice
Citigroup Inc.'s market value.

``This was massively oversubscribed,'' says John Fildes, managing
director of Instinet Pacific Services Ltd. in Hong Kong. ``There is a
huge pent-up wall of money.''


Last Updated: October 29, 2006 19:02 EST
 
Coal Interests Fight Polar Bear Action :: Unequivocal, Joe Fischer,
"warming of the climate system is unequivocal"

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/cont...ington/entries/2007/03/27/coal_interests.html
Coal Interests Fight Polar Bear Action

An organization representing companies that mine coal and burn it to
make electricity has called on its members to fight the proposed
listing of the polar bear as an endangered or threatened species.

"This will essentially declare 'open season' for environmental lawyers
to sue to block viirtually any project that involves carbon dioxide
emissions," the Western Business Roundtable said in an e-mail.

To settle a lawsuit by environmental groups, the Department of
Interior announced last month that it would take a year to consider
whether global warming and melting Arctic ice justifies declaring the
bear "endangered" or "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.

"This seems a little unfair, pitting all those big coal companies and
power companies against the poor polar bear," sniffed Frank O'Donnell,
president of Clean Air Watch.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/27/endangered_species/?source=whitelist

Inside the secretive plan to gut the Endangered Species Act

Proposed regulatory changes, obtained by Salon, would destroy the
"safety net for animals and plants on the brink of extinction," say
environmentalists.

By Rebecca Clarren
Print Email Digg it Del.icio.us My Yahoo RSS Font: S / S+ / S++
story image

March 27, 2007 | The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is maneuvering to
fundamentally weaken the Endangered Species Act, its strategy laid out
in an internal 117-page draft proposal obtained by Salon. The proposed
changes limit the number of species that can be protected and curtail
the acres of wildlife habitat to be preserved. It shifts authority to
enforce the act from the federal government to the states, and it
dilutes legal barriers that protect habitat from sprawl, logging or
mining.

"The proposed changes fundamentally gut the intent of the Endangered
Species Act," says Jan Hasselman, a Seattle attorney with
Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, who helped Salon interpret
the proposal. "This is a no-holds-barred end run around one of
America's most popular environmental protections. If these regulations
stand up, the act will no longer provide a safety net for animals and
plants on the brink of extinction."

In recent months, the Fish and Wildlife Service has gone to
extraordinary efforts to keep drafts of regulatory changes from the
public. All copies of the working document were given a number
corresponding to a person, so that leaked copies could be traced to
that individual. An e-mail sent in March from an assistant regional
director at the Fish and Wildlife Service to agency staff, asking for
comments on and corrections to the first draft, underscored the
concern with secrecy: "Please Keep close hold for now. Dale [Hall,
director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] does not want this
stuff leaking out to stir up discontent based on speculation."

Many Fish and Wildlife Service employees believe the draft is not
based on "defensible science," says a federal employee who asked to
remain anonymous. Yet "there is genuine fear of retaliation for
communicating that to the media. People are afraid for their jobs."

Chris Tollefson, a spokesperson for the service, says that while it's
accurate to characterize the agency as trying to keep the draft under
wraps, the agency has every intention of communicating with the public
about the proposed changes; the draft just hasn't been ready. And, he
adds, it could still be changed as part of a forthcoming formal review
process.

Administration critics characterize the secrecy as a way to maintain
spin control, says Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Center for
Biological Diversity, a national environmental group. "This
administration will often release a 300-page-long document at a press
conference for a newspaper story that will go to press in two hours,
giving the media or public no opportunity to digest it and figure out
what's going on," Suckling says. "[Interior Secretary Dirk] Kempthorne
will give a feel-good quote about how the new regulations are good for
the environment, and they can win the public relations war."

In some ways, the proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act
should come as no surprise. President Bush has hardly been one of its
fans. Under his reign, the administration has granted 57 species
endangered status, the action in each case being prompted by a
lawsuit. That's fewer than in any other administration in history --
and far fewer than were listed during the administrations of Reagan
(253), Clinton (521) or Bush I (234). Furthermore, during this
administration, nearly half of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
employees who work with endangered species reported that they had been
directed by their superiors to ignore scientific evidence that would
result in recommendations for the protection of species, according to
a 2005 survey of more than 1,400 service biologists, ecologists and
botanists conducted by Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility, a nonprofit organization.

"We are not allowed to be honest and forthright, we are expected to
rubber stamp everything," wrote a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist
as part of the survey. "I have 20 years of federal service in this and
this is the worst it has ever been."

The agency has long seen a need to improve the act, says Tollefson.
"This is a look at what's possible," he says. "Too much of our time as
an agency is spent responding to litigation rather than working on
recovering the species that are most in need. The current way the act
is run creates disincentives for people to get involved with
recovering species."

Kempthorne, boss of the Fish and Wildlife Service, has been an
outspoken critic of the act. When he was a U.S. senator from Idaho in
the late 1990s, he championed legislation that would have allowed
government agencies to exempt their actions from Endangered Species
Act regulations, and would have required federal agents to conduct
cost-benefit analyses when considering whether to list a species as
endangered. (The legislation failed.) Last June, in his early days as
interior secretary, Kempthorne told reporters, "I really believe that
we can make improvements to the act itself."

Kempthorne is keeping good on his promise. The proposed draft is
littered with language lifted directly from both Kempthorne's 1998
legislation as well as from a contentious bill by former Rep. Richard
Pombo, R-Calif. (which was also shot down by Congress). It's "a wish
list of regulations that the administration and its industry allies
have been talking about for years," says Suckling.

Written in terse, dry legal language, the proposed draft doesn't make
for easy reading. However, the changes, often seemingly subtle,
generally serve to strip the Fish and Wildlife Service of the power to
do its stated job: to protect wildlife. Some verge on the biologically
ridiculous, say critics, while others are a clear concession to
industry and conservative Western governors who have long complained
that the act degrades the economies of their states by preventing
natural-resource extraction.

One change would significantly limit the number of species eligible
for endangered status. Currently, if a species is likely to become
extinct in "the foreseeable future" -- a species-specific timeframe
that can stretch up to 300 years -- it's a candidate for act
protections. However, the new rules scale back that timeline to mean
either 20 years or 10 generations (the agency can choose which
timeline). For certain species with long life spans, such as killer
whales, grizzly bears or wolves, two decades isn't even one
generation. So even if they might be in danger of extinction, they
would not make the endangered species list because they'd be unlikely
to die out in two decades.

"It makes absolutely no sense biologically," wrote Hasselman in an e-
mail. "One of the Act's weaknesses is that species aren't protected
until they're already in trouble and this proposal puts that flaw on
steroids."

Perhaps the most significant proposed change gives state governors the
opportunity and funding to take over virtually every aspect of the act
from the federal government. This includes not only the right to
create species-recovery plans and the power to veto the reintroduction
of endangered species within state boundaries, but even the authority
to determine what plants and animals get protection. For plants and
animals in Western states, that's bad news: State politicians
throughout the region howled in opposition to the reintroduction of
the Mexican gray wolf into Arizona and the Northern Rockies wolf into
Yellowstone National Park.

"If states are involved, the act would only get minimally enforced,"
says Bob Hallock, a recently retired 34-year veteran of the Fish and
Wildlife Service who, as an endangered species specialist, worked with
state agencies in Idaho, Washington and Montana. "States are, if
anything, closer to special economic interests. They're more
manipulated. The states have not demonstrated the will or interest in
upholding the act. It's why we created a federal law in the first
place."

Additional tweaks in the law would have a major impact. For instance,
the proposal would narrow the definition of a species' geographic
range from the landscape it inhabited historically to the land it
currently occupies. Since the main reason most plants and animals head
toward extinction is due to limited habitat, the change would strongly
hamper the government's ability to protect chunks of land and allow
for a healthy recovery in the wild.

The proposal would also allow both ongoing and planned projects by
such federal agencies as the Army Corps of Engineers and the Forest
Service to go forward, even when scientific evidence indicates that
the projects may drive a species to extinction. Under the new
regulations, as long as the dam or logging isn't hastening the
previous rate of extinction, it's approved. "This makes recovery of
species impossible," says Suckling. (You can read the entire proposal,
a PDF file, here.)

Gutting the Endangered Species Act will only thicken the pall that has
hung over the Fish and Wildlife Service for the past six years,
Hallock says. "They [the Bush administration] don't want the
regulations to be effective. People in the agency are like a bunch of
whipped dogs," he says. "I think it's just unacceptable to go around
squashing other species; they're of incalculable benefit to us. The
optimism we had when this agency started has absolutely been dashed."


http://www.earthjustice.org/news/pr...es-act-regulations-would-gut-protections.html
Bush Administration Rewrite of Endangered Species Act Regulations
Would Gut Protections

Hush-hush proposal "a no-holds-barred end run around one of America's
most popular laws"

Washington, DC -- A secret draft of regulations that fundamentally
rewrite the Endangered Species Act was leaked to two environmental
organizations, which provided them to the press last night An article
in Salon quotes Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman saying, "The
proposed changes fundamentally gut the intent of the Endangered
Species Act."

The changes are fiercely technical and complicated, but make future
listings extremely difficult, redefine key concepts to the detriment
of protected species, virtually hand over administration of the act to
hostile states, and severely restrict habitat protections.

Many of the changes -- lifted from unsuccessful legislative proposals
from then-Senator (now Interior Secretary) Dirk Kempthorne and the
recently defeated congressman Richard Pombo -- are reactions to
policies and practices established as a result of litigation filed by
environmental organizations including Earthjustice.

"After the failure of these legislative proposals in the last
Congress, the Bush administration has opted to gut the Endangered
Species Act through the only avenue left open: administrative
regulations," said Hasselman. "This end-run around the will of
Congress and the American people will not succeed."

A major change would make it more difficult for a species to gain
protection, by scaling back the "foreseeable future" timeframe in
which to consider whether a species is likely to become extinct.
Instead of looking far enough ahead to be able to reasonably determine
whether a species could be heading for extinction, the new regulations
would drastically shorten the timeframe to either 20 years or 10
generations at the agency's discretion. For species with long
generations like killer whales and grizzly bears, this truncated view
of the future isn't nearly enough time to accurately predict whether
they are at-risk now.

"These draft regulations represent a total rejection of the values
held by the vast majority Americans: that we have a responsibility to
protect imperiled species and the special places they call home," said
Kate Freund, Legislative Associate at Earthjustice.

According to several sources within the Fish and Wildlife Service
quoted by Salon, hostility to the law within the agency has never been
so intense. "I have 20 years of federal service in this and this is
the worst it has ever been," one unnamed source is quoted as saying.

In addition, the proposal would allow projects by the Forest Service
and other agencies to proceed even if scientific evidence suggests
that the projects might drive species to extinction so long as the
rate of decline doesn't accelerate owing to the project.

The Bush administration's antipathy to the law is shown by the numbers
of species it has protected, in each case as the result of litigation
-- 57. By comparison, 253 species were listed during the Reagan
administration, 521 under Clinton, and 234 under Bush I.

The administration reportedly had expected to reveal the new
regulations in a few weeks. The draft regulations must be published in
the Federal Register for public comment before they can become final,
which is likely to be at least a year off.

Contact:

Jan Hasselman, Earthjustice, (206) 343-7340, ext. 25
 
On Mar 27, 8:25 pm, Joe Fischer <G...@wrongversion.com> wrote:
> On 27 Mar 2007 "john fernbach" <fernbach1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >Joe Fischer - Here's another warning on the global glut of savings and
> >investment that's threatening the international economy, at least
> >according to this October 2006 report by Bloomberg News.
>
> >Please note: Some of the savings glut -- the "EXCESS CASH" described
> >blow -- is associated with companies owned by governments. But some
> >is private.
>
> >And Bloomberg is saying that the TOTAL amount of cash is a problem --
> >not that the government owned companies or the privately owned
> >companies are doing the most to cause the problem.
>
> I agree, and that is why futures in oil and metals
> are so over priced.
>
> >QUESTION: In a world that's "Awash" in "excess cash," why doesn't it
> >make economic
> >and environmental sense to put that "excess" cash to work fixing
> >global warming?
>
> By what, buying credits on the steps of the temple?
>
> Joe Fischer
 
Coal Interests Fight Polar Bear Action :: Unequivocal, Joe Fischer,
"warming of the climate system is unequivocal"

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/cont...ington/entries/2007/03/27/coal_interests.html
Coal Interests Fight Polar Bear Action

An organization representing companies that mine coal and burn it to
make electricity has called on its members to fight the proposed
listing of the polar bear as an endangered or threatened species.

"This will essentially declare 'open season' for environmental lawyers
to sue to block viirtually any project that involves carbon dioxide
emissions," the Western Business Roundtable said in an e-mail.

To settle a lawsuit by environmental groups, the Department of
Interior announced last month that it would take a year to consider
whether global warming and melting Arctic ice justifies declaring the
bear "endangered" or "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.

"This seems a little unfair, pitting all those big coal companies and
power companies against the poor polar bear," sniffed Frank O'Donnell,
president of Clean Air Watch.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/27/endangered_species/?source=whitelist

Inside the secretive plan to gut the Endangered Species Act

Proposed regulatory changes, obtained by Salon, would destroy the
"safety net for animals and plants on the brink of extinction," say
environmentalists.

By Rebecca Clarren
Print Email Digg it Del.icio.us My Yahoo RSS Font: S / S+ / S++
story image

March 27, 2007 | The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is maneuvering to
fundamentally weaken the Endangered Species Act, its strategy laid out
in an internal 117-page draft proposal obtained by Salon. The proposed
changes limit the number of species that can be protected and curtail
the acres of wildlife habitat to be preserved. It shifts authority to
enforce the act from the federal government to the states, and it
dilutes legal barriers that protect habitat from sprawl, logging or
mining.

"The proposed changes fundamentally gut the intent of the Endangered
Species Act," says Jan Hasselman, a Seattle attorney with
Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, who helped Salon interpret
the proposal. "This is a no-holds-barred end run around one of
America's most popular environmental protections. If these regulations
stand up, the act will no longer provide a safety net for animals and
plants on the brink of extinction."

In recent months, the Fish and Wildlife Service has gone to
extraordinary efforts to keep drafts of regulatory changes from the
public. All copies of the working document were given a number
corresponding to a person, so that leaked copies could be traced to
that individual. An e-mail sent in March from an assistant regional
director at the Fish and Wildlife Service to agency staff, asking for
comments on and corrections to the first draft, underscored the
concern with secrecy: "Please Keep close hold for now. Dale [Hall,
director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] does not want this
stuff leaking out to stir up discontent based on speculation."

Many Fish and Wildlife Service employees believe the draft is not
based on "defensible science," says a federal employee who asked to
remain anonymous. Yet "there is genuine fear of retaliation for
communicating that to the media. People are afraid for their jobs."

Chris Tollefson, a spokesperson for the service, says that while it's
accurate to characterize the agency as trying to keep the draft under
wraps, the agency has every intention of communicating with the public
about the proposed changes; the draft just hasn't been ready. And, he
adds, it could still be changed as part of a forthcoming formal review
process.

Administration critics characterize the secrecy as a way to maintain
spin control, says Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Center for
Biological Diversity, a national environmental group. "This
administration will often release a 300-page-long document at a press
conference for a newspaper story that will go to press in two hours,
giving the media or public no opportunity to digest it and figure out
what's going on," Suckling says. "[Interior Secretary Dirk] Kempthorne
will give a feel-good quote about how the new regulations are good for
the environment, and they can win the public relations war."

In some ways, the proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act
should come as no surprise. President Bush has hardly been one of its
fans. Under his reign, the administration has granted 57 species
endangered status, the action in each case being prompted by a
lawsuit. That's fewer than in any other administration in history --
and far fewer than were listed during the administrations of Reagan
(253), Clinton (521) or Bush I (234). Furthermore, during this
administration, nearly half of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
employees who work with endangered species reported that they had been
directed by their superiors to ignore scientific evidence that would
result in recommendations for the protection of species, according to
a 2005 survey of more than 1,400 service biologists, ecologists and
botanists conducted by Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility, a nonprofit organization.

"We are not allowed to be honest and forthright, we are expected to
rubber stamp everything," wrote a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist
as part of the survey. "I have 20 years of federal service in this and
this is the worst it has ever been."

The agency has long seen a need to improve the act, says Tollefson.
"This is a look at what's possible," he says. "Too much of our time as
an agency is spent responding to litigation rather than working on
recovering the species that are most in need. The current way the act
is run creates disincentives for people to get involved with
recovering species."

Kempthorne, boss of the Fish and Wildlife Service, has been an
outspoken critic of the act. When he was a U.S. senator from Idaho in
the late 1990s, he championed legislation that would have allowed
government agencies to exempt their actions from Endangered Species
Act regulations, and would have required federal agents to conduct
cost-benefit analyses when considering whether to list a species as
endangered. (The legislation failed.) Last June, in his early days as
interior secretary, Kempthorne told reporters, "I really believe that
we can make improvements to the act itself."

Kempthorne is keeping good on his promise. The proposed draft is
littered with language lifted directly from both Kempthorne's 1998
legislation as well as from a contentious bill by former Rep. Richard
Pombo, R-Calif. (which was also shot down by Congress). It's "a wish
list of regulations that the administration and its industry allies
have been talking about for years," says Suckling.

Written in terse, dry legal language, the proposed draft doesn't make
for easy reading. However, the changes, often seemingly subtle,
generally serve to strip the Fish and Wildlife Service of the power to
do its stated job: to protect wildlife. Some verge on the biologically
ridiculous, say critics, while others are a clear concession to
industry and conservative Western governors who have long complained
that the act degrades the economies of their states by preventing
natural-resource extraction.

One change would significantly limit the number of species eligible
for endangered status. Currently, if a species is likely to become
extinct in "the foreseeable future" -- a species-specific timeframe
that can stretch up to 300 years -- it's a candidate for act
protections. However, the new rules scale back that timeline to mean
either 20 years or 10 generations (the agency can choose which
timeline). For certain species with long life spans, such as killer
whales, grizzly bears or wolves, two decades isn't even one
generation. So even if they might be in danger of extinction, they
would not make the endangered species list because they'd be unlikely
to die out in two decades.

"It makes absolutely no sense biologically," wrote Hasselman in an e-
mail. "One of the Act's weaknesses is that species aren't protected
until they're already in trouble and this proposal puts that flaw on
steroids."

Perhaps the most significant proposed change gives state governors the
opportunity and funding to take over virtually every aspect of the act
from the federal government. This includes not only the right to
create species-recovery plans and the power to veto the reintroduction
of endangered species within state boundaries, but even the authority
to determine what plants and animals get protection. For plants and
animals in Western states, that's bad news: State politicians
throughout the region howled in opposition to the reintroduction of
the Mexican gray wolf into Arizona and the Northern Rockies wolf into
Yellowstone National Park.

"If states are involved, the act would only get minimally enforced,"
says Bob Hallock, a recently retired 34-year veteran of the Fish and
Wildlife Service who, as an endangered species specialist, worked with
state agencies in Idaho, Washington and Montana. "States are, if
anything, closer to special economic interests. They're more
manipulated. The states have not demonstrated the will or interest in
upholding the act. It's why we created a federal law in the first
place."

Additional tweaks in the law would have a major impact. For instance,
the proposal would narrow the definition of a species' geographic
range from the landscape it inhabited historically to the land it
currently occupies. Since the main reason most plants and animals head
toward extinction is due to limited habitat, the change would strongly
hamper the government's ability to protect chunks of land and allow
for a healthy recovery in the wild.

The proposal would also allow both ongoing and planned projects by
such federal agencies as the Army Corps of Engineers and the Forest
Service to go forward, even when scientific evidence indicates that
the projects may drive a species to extinction. Under the new
regulations, as long as the dam or logging isn't hastening the
previous rate of extinction, it's approved. "This makes recovery of
species impossible," says Suckling. (You can read the entire proposal,
a PDF file, here.)

Gutting the Endangered Species Act will only thicken the pall that has
hung over the Fish and Wildlife Service for the past six years,
Hallock says. "They [the Bush administration] don't want the
regulations to be effective. People in the agency are like a bunch of
whipped dogs," he says. "I think it's just unacceptable to go around
squashing other species; they're of incalculable benefit to us. The
optimism we had when this agency started has absolutely been dashed."


http://www.earthjustice.org/news/pr...es-act-regulations-would-gut-protections.html
Bush Administration Rewrite of Endangered Species Act Regulations
Would Gut Protections

Hush-hush proposal "a no-holds-barred end run around one of America's
most popular laws"

Washington, DC -- A secret draft of regulations that fundamentally
rewrite the Endangered Species Act was leaked to two environmental
organizations, which provided them to the press last night An article
in Salon quotes Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman saying, "The
proposed changes fundamentally gut the intent of the Endangered
Species Act."

The changes are fiercely technical and complicated, but make future
listings extremely difficult, redefine key concepts to the detriment
of protected species, virtually hand over administration of the act to
hostile states, and severely restrict habitat protections.

Many of the changes -- lifted from unsuccessful legislative proposals
from then-Senator (now Interior Secretary) Dirk Kempthorne and the
recently defeated congressman Richard Pombo -- are reactions to
policies and practices established as a result of litigation filed by
environmental organizations including Earthjustice.

"After the failure of these legislative proposals in the last
Congress, the Bush administration has opted to gut the Endangered
Species Act through the only avenue left open: administrative
regulations," said Hasselman. "This end-run around the will of
Congress and the American people will not succeed."

A major change would make it more difficult for a species to gain
protection, by scaling back the "foreseeable future" timeframe in
which to consider whether a species is likely to become extinct.
Instead of looking far enough ahead to be able to reasonably determine
whether a species could be heading for extinction, the new regulations
would drastically shorten the timeframe to either 20 years or 10
generations at the agency's discretion. For species with long
generations like killer whales and grizzly bears, this truncated view
of the future isn't nearly enough time to accurately predict whether
they are at-risk now.

"These draft regulations represent a total rejection of the values
held by the vast majority Americans: that we have a responsibility to
protect imperiled species and the special places they call home," said
Kate Freund, Legislative Associate at Earthjustice.

According to several sources within the Fish and Wildlife Service
quoted by Salon, hostility to the law within the agency has never been
so intense. "I have 20 years of federal service in this and this is
the worst it has ever been," one unnamed source is quoted as saying.

In addition, the proposal would allow projects by the Forest Service
and other agencies to proceed even if scientific evidence suggests
that the projects might drive species to extinction so long as the
rate of decline doesn't accelerate owing to the project.

The Bush administration's antipathy to the law is shown by the numbers
of species it has protected, in each case as the result of litigation
-- 57. By comparison, 253 species were listed during the Reagan
administration, 521 under Clinton, and 234 under Bush I.

The administration reportedly had expected to reveal the new
regulations in a few weeks. The draft regulations must be published in
the Federal Register for public comment before they can become final,
which is likely to be at least a year off.

Contact:

Jan Hasselman, Earthjustice, (206) 343-7340, ext. 25
 
On 27 Mar 2007 "john fernbach" <fernbach1948@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Joe Fischer - Here's another warning on the global glut of savings and
>investment that's threatening the international economy, at least
>according to this October 2006 report by Bloomberg News.
>
>Please note: Some of the savings glut -- the "EXCESS CASH" described
>blow -- is associated with companies owned by governments. But some
>is private.
>
>And Bloomberg is saying that the TOTAL amount of cash is a problem --
>not that the government owned companies or the privately owned
>companies are doing the most to cause the problem.

I agree, and that is why futures in oil and metals
are so over priced.

>QUESTION: In a world that's "Awash" in "excess cash," why doesn't it
>make economic
>and environmental sense to put that "excess" cash to work fixing
>global warming?

By what, buying credits on the steps of the temple?

Joe Fischer
 
The GOP Vs. Global Warming :: Why do they want to be the "Kill the
Earth Party"?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/26/opinion/main2608369.shtml
The GOP Vs. Global Warming
The New Republic: Why Are Republicans More Skeptical, Even As Evidence
Grows?

(The New Republic) This column was written by Jonathan Chait. Last
year, the National Journal asked a group of Republican senators and
House members: "Do you think it's been proven beyond a reasonable
doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?" Of the
respondents, 23 percent said yes, 77 percent said no. In the year
since that poll, of course, global warming has seized a massive amount
of public attention. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change released a study, with input from 2,000 scientists worldwide,
finding that the certainty on man-made global warming had risen to 90
percent.

So, the magazine asked the question again last month. The results?
Only 13 percent of Republicans agreed that global warming has been
proved. As the evidence for global warming gets stronger, Republicans
are actually getting more skeptical. Al Gore's recent congressional
testimony on the subject, and the chilly reception he received from
GOP members, suggest the discouraging conclusion that skepticism on
global warming is hardening into party dogma. Like the notion that tax
cuts are always good or that President Bush is a brave war leader,
it's something you almost have to believe if you're an elected
Republican.

How did it get this way? The easy answer is that Republicans are just
tools of the energy industry. It's certainly true that many of them
are. Leading global warming skeptic Representative Joe L. Barton (R-
Texas), for instance, was the subject of a fascinating story in the
Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago. The bottom line is that his
relationship to the energy industry is as puppet relates to hand.

But the financial relationship doesn't quite explain the entirety of
GOP skepticism on global warming. For one thing, the energy industry
has dramatically softened its opposition to global warming over the
last year, even as Republicans have stiffened theirs.

The truth is more complicated - and more depressing: A small number of
hard-core ideologues (some, but not all, industry shills) have led the
thinking for the whole conservative movement.

Your typical conservative has little interest in the issue. Of course,
neither does the average nonconservative. But we nonconservatives tend
to defer to mainstream scientific wisdom. Conservatives defer to a
tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming
professional consensus.

National Review magazine, with its popular Web site, is a perfect
example. It has a blog dedicated to casting doubt on global warming,
or solutions to global warming, or anybody who advocates a solution.
Its title is "Planet Gore." The psychology at work here is pretty
clear: Your average conservative may not know anything about climate
science, but conservatives do know they hate Al Gore. So, hold up Gore
as a hate figure and conservatives will let that dictate their
thinking on the issue.

Meanwhile, Republicans who do believe in global warming get shunted
aside. Nicole Gaudiano of Gannett News Service recently reported that
Representative Wayne Gilchrest asked to be on the Select Committee on
Energy Independence and Global Warming. House Republican leader John
Boehner of Ohio refused to allow it unless Gilchrest would say that
humans have not contributed to global warming. The Maryland Republican
refused and was denied a seat.

Representatives Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md. and Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich.,
both research scientists, also were denied seats on the committee.
Normally, relevant expertise would be considered an advantage. In this
case, it was a disqualification; if the GOP allowed Republican
researchers who accept the scientific consensus to sit on a global
warming panel, it would kill the party's strategy of making global
warming seem to be the pet obsession of Democrats and Hollywood
lefties.

The phenomenon here is that a tiny number of influential conservative
figures set the party line; dissenters are marginalized, and the rank
and file go along with it. No doubt something like this happens on the
Democratic side pretty often too. It's just rare to find the
phenomenon occurring in such a blatant way.

You can tell that some conservatives who want to fight global warming
understand how the psychology works and are trying to turn it in their
favor. Their response is to emphasize nuclear power as an integral
element of the solution. Senator John McCain, who supports action on
global warming, did this in a recent National Review interview. The
technique seems to be surprisingly effective. When framed as a case
for more nuclear plants, conservatives seem to let down their guard.

In reality, nuclear plants may be a small part of the answer, but you
couldn't build enough to make a major dent. But the psychology is
perfect. Conservatives know that lefties hate nuclear power. So, yeah,
Rush Limbaugh listeners, let's fight global warming and stick it to
those hippies!

By Jonathan Chait
If you like this article, go to www.tnr.com, which breaks down today's
top stories and offers nearly 100 years of news, opinion, and
analysis.
 
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/news/4659016.html

Lawmakers place global warming on the agenda


Legislature bills on global warming

Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth

H.B. 722 Establishes task force to assess impacts of global warming on
Texas and ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions

H.B. 3897 Requires TCEQ to develop carbon dioxide trading program for
power plants and to seek out ways to generate power producing less
carbon dioxide

H.B. 2790 Encourages public system to invest in environmental
technology to thwart effects of global warming

H.B. 3939 Prohibits power plants from receiving any benefit or credit
for future carbon emissions

Rep. Joe Crabb, R-Atascocita

H.B. 722 Establish global warming task force to assess impacts of
global warming on Texas and to examine ways to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions

Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin

H.B. 3431 Exempts from property taxation pollution controls installed
to curb carbon dioxide and halves tax on oil produced in state if
carbon dioxide is used in recovery

Rep. Ana Hernandez, D-Houston

H.B. 2362 Requires cap and trade program for carbon dioxide to be
developed for states power plants

Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas

H.B. 270 Directs Texas emerging technology to fund technology that
significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Places a tax on the
purchase of coal for revenue.

Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin

H.B. 2073 Calls for TCEQ to prepare a report listing strategies to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Strategies may not result in net cost
to state, consumers or businesses.

Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin

S.B. 1687 Calls for TCEQ to prepare a report listing strategies to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Strategies may not result in net cost
to state, consumers or businesses.

Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston

S.B. 945 Directs the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990
levels by 2021 using market-based techniques, better monitoring and
reporting

Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso

S.B. 1762 Calls for Texas Water Development Board to study impact of
climate change on state water supplies

Sen. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin

H.B. 2143 Directs the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990
levels by 2020 using a cap and trade program, better monitoring and
reporting


Lawmakers this session have filed more bills to assess the effects
global warming will have on the state and to curb the pollution
causing it than at any other time in legislative history, according to
a Houston Chronicle analysis.

A dozen measures, all but one carried solely by Democrats,
specifically address the issue of global warming.

The bills range from studying how a predicted rise in the Earth's
temperature will affect the state and its water resources, to
requiring industrial plants to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases
believed to be causing the warming trend.

"We have reached a real tipping point in the public's understanding of
the issue and the scientific consensus. I don't think there is any
question now that it has reached Texas," said Sen. Kirk Watson, D-
Austin, one of 10 lawmakers with legislation.

While even the sponsors say most of the bills have little to no chance
of passage, the move is still significant because it signals that
Texas - the country's largest source of heat-trapping gases - has
officially joined the global warming policy debate.

"More states are getting involved, including some states that a year
or two ago we didn't think would be involved in this issue," said
Barry Rabe, a professor of public policy at the University of
Michigan.

While other states began addressing global warming in the late 1980s,
only one bill in the past 10 Texas legislative sessions has focused
solely on the issue - a 1999 bill asking for a state review, the
Chronicle found. And that one died in committee.

'Real challenges'
And though Texas is at the forefront of diversifying its energy
sources - the state now has more electricity generated by wind than
any other - Rabe says that global warming played only a minor role in
the state embracing renewable energy.

"Climate change policy presents some real challenges for Texas because
its levels of emissions are so high," Rabe said.

These challenges are what advocates and lawmakers are using to sell
the bills to a Republican-controlled Legislature that historically has
not supported strong environmental laws, and that is led by a governor
and lieutenant governor who doubt the role of human activity in
climate change.

A series of recent events has provided impetus for Texas to address
the issue now.

Focus on benefits
Among them are the recent decision of TXU to cut back plans to build
11 coal-fired power plants in the face of environmental opposition; Al
Gore's Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth; and a
recognition by a growing number of corporations and major oil
companies that the issue needs attention.

Rather than mire progress in the scientific debate, lawmakers are
focusing on the economic costs and benefits, drafting bills they say
even disbelievers can pass.

"We will be the biggest loser in the global warming debate, or the
biggest winners, and that is what our state faces," said Tom "Smitty"
Smith, the executive director of Public Citizen's Texas office.

Controlling the cost
Watson and Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin, are pushing legislation
that would require the state environmental agency to list strategies
that cut emissions and cost nothing. An example would be compact
fluorescent lights which cost more, but in the long run, save money on
electricity.

"I refer to it as a no regrets global warming bill," said Watson. "At
a minimum, what we need to do is pass legislation that doesn't cost
anything and will reduce emissions."

These types of bills, along with those that call for studies, have the
best chances of passing, lawmakers and environmental lobbyists say.

One of the so-called study bills, House Bill 722, has gotten the
support of conservative Republican Rep. Joe Crabb of Atascocita, who
has joined forces with Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, a longtime
environmentalist, on the bill.

Changing views
Crabb signed on as a co-sponsor after a terse exchange with Texas A&M
University climate scientist Andy Dessler in committee, in which Crabb
asked whether warming was natural.

"I never thought, the whole time, I'd be here, that I'd agree with the
author of this bill on anything," said Crabb, to the chuckles of
members of the House Committee on Energy Resources.

Other Republicans say global warming is best addressed on the national
or international level.

"While I applaud state-level efforts to heighten awareness of carbon
dioxide ... we run the risk of pushing industry from states with
carbon dioxide regulation to states without, which ultimately solves
nothing because this is a global problem," said Sen. Kip Averitt, R-
Waco, chairman of the Senate's Natural Resources Committee.

Broader action
Science supports a broader approach. Unlike other pollutants that
cause local or regional problems, the gases that turn the Earth's
atmosphere into a greenhouse act globally.

Whether the carbon dioxide is released in Texas or China, it has the
same effect.

Willingness to act
So if emissions are reduced here, but increase more elsewhere, carbon
dioxide globally still will rise.

Some lawmakers say the bills are meant to show a willingness to act.

"I don't think Texas is ready," said Robin Chandler, the legislative
director for Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, whose HB 2143 is among
the most progressive of those filed.

"But it doesn't mean the message shouldn't be sent, or these bills
shouldn't be filed."
 
On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 07:20:39 -0700, john fernbach wrote:

> Bill Ward - hmm. You're like most of us: switch the topic or the focus
> when the argument isn't going your way.
>
> A few posts back you were implying that it was "dangerous" to plow money
> into alternative
> energy technologies and other greenhouse gas controls -- because
> supposedly, our society
> would need the money to invest in "Moore's Law" and microelectronics
> instead.
>
> Now you're switching, and going back to the supposedly unproven nature of
> AGW science.

You do know that this NG is archived in Google groups, don't you?

So I'm now going to call you a liar, which I take seriously, and will not
tolerate. Anybody that questions my decision can look back over the last
few posts and decide for themselves whether I am justified in my decision.

Or you can justify your claim by citing the exact posts that led you to
such inane conclusions.

Either way, welcome to my filter, and goodbye.

<snip off topic nonsense>
 
Bill Ward wrote:

> Or you can justify your claim by citing the exact posts that led you to
> such inane conclusions.
>
> Either way, welcome to my filter, and goodbye.

No, wait, how can he cite if you filter? Oh, darn, he's gone.

--
Get A Free Orbiter Space Flight Simulator :
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html
 

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