SUPREME HEAT
On Monday, June
26th, in a surprise ruling, the Supreme Court entered the global warming
arena. The vote yielded to a coalition of environmentalists and requires the
government to revisit pollution regulations from cars, trucks and power
plants. This is interesting in a few different ways. First of all, the
ruling came over the strong objection of the Bush administration.
Administration lawyer's argued whether the government should be involved in
the "extraordinarily complex task of addressing the global issue of
greenhouse gas emissions". The case will be heard in the Fall. The vote is
to hear the case. Regardless of where you stand on this issue, and it is an
emotional issue for some reason, it will be interesting to see where this
leads. I find people to be very passionate about their opinions on this
subject. It always seems to be a political issue, taken as an insult to
either party, depending on which side of the argument you present. I happen
to be a believer, to the extent of believing that we are polluting the
atmosphere. You may have noticed, I am not a scientist. I am, however, a
pragmatist.
My pragmatic thinking leads me to the conclusion that the increasing, and
now astounding, level of the burning of fossil fuels since the early 1900's
has probably changed the chemical make-up of the air above us. As a private
pilot who has left New Hampshire on a clear, beautiful day, and arrived in
Teterboro, New Jersey, just off the Hudson River and a stone's throw from
New York City, to conditions that are IFR, that is, visibility so restricted
by smog and haze that you can't see, I can't believe that we aren't doing
damage. To see, from the air, a city the size of New York resting under what
appears to be a huge cow-flap hovering over the city, and blue sky to all
other quadrants, well.... The Federal Aviation Administration definition
calls the combination of smoke and fog...smog. That's where the word came
from.
It is well known that government is held hostage to the automakers, oil
companies and power suppliers. The resistance should come as no surprise.
The element that has recently changed, in my opinion, is the realignment of
certain key scientists on the issue of global warming. It is becoming
increasingly difficult to ignore the problem in light of the almost daily
smashing of weather records all over the country. Huge hurricanes,
tornadoes, rain like I've never seen here in the NorthEast. These events,
though they may well be part of a natural cycle, nonetheless, draw a lot of
attention. I don't believe they are part of a natural cycle although I
respect anyone's right to believe otherwise. What I don't understand is the
resistance to trying to figure it out. People actually get angry over the
issue. "Oh, you tree-huggers..." I'm not a tree hugger, but I do not relish
the idea of finding ourselves in an accelerated global-heating situation
with no time to correct. Do we want Earth to be the astronomical equivalent
of a 3 pound lobster at a galactic clam-bake? The notion the that the planet
is too large, the oceans too grand, our landscape too varied and expansive
for us humans too inflict lasting damage is , to me, nonsense. The
atmosphere, the area between the Earth's surface and the edge of space, is
pretty thin in relative terms.
Another interesting change? Diesel engines in heavy trucks manufactured
after January 2007 will have an exhaust after-burner device that is the size
of a garbage can, is seriously going to affect truck applications, i.e. dump
bodies, garbage bodies, cement mixers, etc. It is expected to add as much as
$17,000.00 to the price of a new heavy-truck. It burns the ash and soot out
of the exhaust before discharge. If you wonder why this is necessary, and
the amount of noise diesel engine and truck manufacturers must have made to
try and avoid it's imposition, it kind of makes you wonder. Little things
like this, that aren't so little really, but slide by the public eye, worry
me more than any scientific report. Seems like somebody knows something the
rest of us don't know.
I am not a conspiracy theorist. I am not an alarmist. I am not a gloom
monger. I also don't want to be a human Swedish meatball. I don't want the
Atlantic Coastline to be in Wisconsin. And I really don't want to be the
first human to find out if the lobsters were screaming when they got dropped
in the pot.