Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

[c1ue]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

now the problem arises that there are so many of us. were we all to simultaneously achieve enlightenment, would a certain high proportion of us come to the realization that they should kill themselves to reduce man's footprint?

You're also not speaking to the point that whatever the 'enlightened ones' think, they also desire to impose their will on the 'unenlightened'.

That's when the self abnegation turns to persecution.

Outside of this aforementioned theoretical society of total enlightenment - there are always going to be at least some people who clearly do waste as well as many more people who appear to waste.

The problem is that are so many people who desire to judge what constitutes waste and to pass judgment on those who fail to 'not waste'.

[GRG55]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

I'm afraid for me, the debate can't so easily be framed as a choice between cheaper goods or the environment, at least not in the long term. Morality, for me, trumps profits and comforts. The issue for me, isn't just the size of the land that's being sacrificed, or the quantity of carbon units being burned into the atmosphere. It is just simply, the principle of the matter. It is flawed to the core.

Call it a non-western philosophical outlook, or whatever you want, but the bottom line is that 90% of the crap we think we need isn't required at all. It's just a bunch of wants that have been confused as needs. Humanity, in its inate search for happiness, ends up getting very confused and instead chases after temporary pleasures and comforts, none of which are required for our survival, and even when acquired do not EVER satisfy the thirst permanently, and so our desires grow even bigger and we move on chasing after the next thing. Meanwhile, we are semi-miserable during the entire chase process (which is often a much longer phase than the temporary pleasures we experience as the reward), we even tell ourselves that if only we could get X, then we would be happy, until perhaps we get it, but then another "need" comes up, and we tell ourselves the same lie over and over again; subconciously forgetting that we should already be happy with what we just got. Most often this goes on for an entire life-time, and at the cost of everything else, including our own overall happiness. I think the western term for this is "the rat race", but it isn't merely confined to climbing corporate ladders either. And then to top it all off, we consider ourselves the pinnacle of intelect on Earth. That might be so, but the wisdom, or lack thereof is highly questionable...

Every developed nation in the world can trace it's history back to time when it was an agrarian society. And if that enlightened, spiritual, utopian state was so wonderful why is it that so many left the farms for sweatshop factory jobs in the grimy cities? In the UK during the Industrial Revolution. In the USA after the Civil War. In Canada after WWI. In Italy long before any of these. There was no television advertising pushing the latest luxury SUV, holiday package beach resort, designer shoes, brightly coloured ED pill, or other "wants" to coerce them into leaving their homes and villages.

Why is it that this process is being repeated in so many "non-Western" societies today, China and India being only the most prominent? Is this mass of humanity as confused as we "westerners", and chasing after temporary pleasures and comforts, instead of doing the right thing and focussing only on what is needed for "survival"?

You suggest we "Call it a non-western philosophical outlook", but frankly where is this wonderfully enlightened, morally pure, "non-western" place where this admirable philosophy is deeply rooted? Sub-Saharan Africa? The steppes of Central Asia? The pampas of South America? The sheep farms of New Zealand? Nebraska? Hollywood?

Perhaps this wonderful place is tucked away in a picturesque little town in the mountains of Switzerland? A century ago it was the Church that played the primary role of defining for us what constituted sinful behaviour, and the rituals needed to redeem ourselves and absolve our guilt. In our modern societies that role has been transferred to the high priests of whatever Great Global Secular Religion grips mankind in the moment. Some of these people, like George Soros and Al Gore, transcend the whole range of issues - they are our modern day cardinals and archbishops, and they can be seen each year gathered at places like Davos, the Vatican City of our times. They are the ones that preach to us about the blasphemy of consumption and the sins of our carbon footprint [the Gospel according to Gore]. They are the ones that explain to the guilty flock what must be done to achieve redemption and cleanse ourselves. Invariably the pattern is: 1) The developed economies need to tighten their belts and learn to fast; 2) the developed economies need to provide more resources to the developing economies, so they no longer have to suffer from the ravages of fasting; and 3) let's schedule another conference

But make sure it's near an airport where we can land our private jets.

To be fair, Davos is advertised as "carbon neutral". Apparently every year the participants are required to donate money to plant trees in third-world countries to offset the emissions from their jets and limousines. I see that Al Gore is one of the prominent protestors against the pipeline that is the subject of this thread. I wonder how many trees he's paid to plant to offset the carbon footprint of his 8-bathroom + guest house residence in the Belle Meade area of Nashville? I wonder if he even realizes he uses fossil fuels to keep up his schedule moving around the world...

[c1ue]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

To be fair, Davos is advertised as "carbon neutral". Apparently every year the participants are required to donate money to plant trees in third-world countries to offset the emissions from their jets and limousines. I see that Al Gore is one of the prominent protestors against the pipeline that is the subject of this thread. I wonder how many trees he's paid to plant to offset the carbon footprint of his 8-bathroom + guest house residence in the Belle Meade area of Nashville? I wonder if he even realizes he uses fossil fuels to keep up his schedule moving around the world...

Do what I say, not what I do.
/sarc

[aaron]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

we go around believing that "this is our only life", and therefore we should "make the most of it", "live life to the fullest", "enjoy it while you can". Sound familiar? These beliefs stem from a huge assumption, not any certainty. But since Science has no tools to investigate the beyond (or the 'before'), we default to: Until we can't see it, we can't prove it, and so it must not exist. Which by the way, is not scientific at all. Under this root assertion, we justify all our consumarism, the environment and other living creatures be damned if they get in our way.

I think you will find that there are a large number of "believers" who think the earth is going to be wiped out by the four horsemen. That is why it is a waste of time and energy to be concerned with such earthly matters as the "environment." Moreover, "trust in God" written all over our money and government --> What the hell do I need to concern myself with these questions for? IT IS NOT MY PROBLEM!

[aaron]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

http://tinyurl.com/3t977hb

Wink

[Starving Steve]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

All fish bones, not just salmon bones, have heavy metals in them because heavy metals are part of the NATURAL environment. Heavy metals exist everywhere on Earth. In San Jose, California, fish in the creeks and fish in the reservoirs nearby have tiny amounts of mercury in their bones because cinnabar (natural mercury ore) is in the rocks and soil of Santa Clara County and San Benito County, California.

Some of the heavy metals in fish bones everywhere might be traces of mercury, cadmium, lead, uranium, plutonium, thorium, silver, indium, among other heavy metals. Even human bones contain trace amounts of heavy metals..... The bottom-line is that the activities of mankind can not be blamed for natural elements occurring in the environment everywhere on this planet, including the occurrence of heavy metals. And all bones of mammals contain metals, including trace amounts of heavy metals, because bones, especially bone marrow inside bones, function as the waste dump of mammalian-systems. So natural heavy metals go to bones, naturally.... End of story.

If one does not like how nature works on this planet, they might move to the Moon or to Mars. Please pass that suggestion on to the EPA, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Federation, the Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, and all of the rest of that eco-bunch.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

All fish bones, not just salmon bones, have heavy metals in them because heavy metals are part of the NATURAL environment. Heavy metals exist everywhere on Earth. In San Jose, California, fish in the creeks and fish in the reservoirs nearby have tiny amounts of mercury in their bones because cinnabar (natural mercury ore) is in the rocks and soil of Santa Clara County and San Benito County, California.

Some of the heavy metals in fish bones everywhere might be traces of mercury, cadmium, lead, uranium, plutonium, thorium, silver, indium, among other heavy metals. Even human bones contain trace amounts of heavy metals..... The bottom-line is that the activities of mankind can not be blamed for natural elements occurring in the environment everywhere on this planet, including the occurrence of heavy metals. And all bones of mammals contain metals, including trace amounts of heavy metals, because bones, especially bone marrow inside bones, function as the waste dump of mammalian-systems. So natural heavy metals go to bones, naturally.... End of story.

If one does not like how nature works on this planet, they might move to the Moon or to Mars. Please pass that suggestion on to the EPA, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Federation, the Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, and all of the rest of that eco-bunch.

Other cool stuff found in bones, even human bones:

Strontium, a metal but not a heavy metal; it's rather rare, but it is in rocks at Strontian, Scotland. The eco-frauds made a big stink about Strontium 90 in fish bones, from fall-out from atom bomb testing during the 1960s. However, strontium is a natural element found in rocks, especially at Strontian, Scotland.

Tellurium, a heavy metal and rather scarce on Earth. Tellurium is actually in some rocks of the Mesabi Range in Minnesota. Tellurium can end-up in bones.

Radium 226, a heavy metal and radioactive. Kids ate radium-sulfide from the hands of clock radios during the 1950s and early 1960s. The radium had a half-life of >1600 years, so it was not all that radioactive--- but not all that benign either. The radioactivity from radium metal radiates a blue colour in the dark. On clock radios and wrist watches, the radium-sulfide radiated a brilliant green light during the night. Radium is found naturally on Earth in rocks in Romania, but radium is very rare on Earth. Once eaten, radium can end-up in the bones.

Calcium, a light weight metal and very common on Earth. Bones need and love calcium!

[astonas]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

All fish bones, not just salmon bones, have heavy metals in them because heavy metals are part of the NATURAL environment. Heavy metals exist everywhere on Earth. In San Jose, California, fish in the creeks and fish in the reservoirs nearby have tiny amounts of mercury in their bones because cinnabar (natural mercury ore) is in the rocks and soil of Santa Clara County and San Benito County, California.

[...]So natural heavy metals go to bones, naturally.... End of story.

If one does not like how nature works on this planet, they might move to the Moon or to Mars. Please pass that suggestion on to the EPA, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Federation, the Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, and all of the rest of that eco-bunch.

There seem to be several profound misunderstandings here.

(1) Natural does not mean good. There are a vast number of natural toxins that will kill you.

(2) Toxins are not binary in their effect. The principle of "dosis facit venenum" (In the dose lies the poison) applies here. If a toxin is naturally present in a foodsource at 1 ppb (parts per billion), and causes no significant problems, that does not mean that it is just as safe in the same foodsource at 100 ppm (parts per million). The human body can handle a certain concentration and buildup of toxins, but at some point the defense/filtration mechanisms become overwhelmed, and the system (eg. liver, kidney, lymph, etc.) fails. This is why toxicity is discussed using numbers such as LD50, (lethal dose 50%) which is the dosage which kills 50% of the individuals exposed.

(3) Our biological defense mechanisms have evolved over eons to accommodate naturally occurring levels of toxins. The additional, man-originated levels of toxins frequently show symptoms or cause deaths because we have not evolved mechanisms sufficiently strong to process these, as they are a recent addition to our environment.

(4) If something can occur without man's intervention (eg. heavy metals accumulating in food sources, climate change, etc.) that does not mean that all such occurrences can be attributed to nature, rather than mankind. If you remove the top of a mountain to get at the coal beneath, and the resulting rocks are exposed to the elements, heavy metals into the environment. Yes, these certainly did exist naturally before they were exposed. And a very small fraction even made it into food without man's help. But their existence is not the issue. The degree of their participation in the biosphere and the food supply is the issue. In the example I gave (which is far from unique), this biological availability is indeed fully attributable to mankind's intervention, as without man, those rocks would not be exposed to the biosphere, but be deeply buried.

(5) One thing to remember is that, contrary to popular opinion, toxicity is not actually a political issue at all. The LD50 numbers and the doses which cause symptom onset are quite well established, and only very seldom change with new data. A vast range and quantity of toxins have been given to animal test subjects and correlated with observed human exposures to determine these numbers. There has recently been a lot of lobbying to ignore scientifically established numbers when setting environmental rules, but the arguments presented are almost universally economic ("this will cost jobs") rather than medical ("this won't really hurt people").

(6) The question that actually is political and debatable is how many people are we ok with hurting, and how badly, in order to help the economy grow. For each person, there is always a number of cases that is acceptable (even if it is the number due to naturally occurring toxins), and there is a number or severity of cases that is always unacceptable. Pretending either all-or-nothing position ("No regulation at all" or "No resource usage at all") is valid is simply . . . I'll go with the word "unrealistic". The political discussion that can and must happen with any regulation is what the acceptable human cost is for any given amount of economic growth.

The real irony here, is that when the numbers are actually discussed explicitly, there are surprisingly few disinterested individuals who disagree strongly with how the rules should be set. People can be quite reasonable about tradeoffs like this, and agreement on acceptable losses, while unpleasant, is quite possible. I believe that even the strong tones of this thread would probably vanish if the discussion were boiled down to actual numbers, since all non-psychopathic people tend to have an innate sense of what level of suffering they feel comfortable inflicting on others.

It is when financially interested parties (people who stand to personally benefit, while distributing health care costs to others) are included in the decision-making process, rather than the data-accumulation process, that things start to get problematic. Sadly, this is the position we are in today in reviewing our regulations.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

Thank you for your interesting and coherent post above.

I think there are several issues here: a.) What is a pollutant? b.) What concentration makes something toxic? c.) What gives government the right to stringently regulate everything, including natural but so-called and so-deemed "toxins" in the environment? d.) What gives govn't, in this case the EPA, the right to deem a natural substance to be "a pollutant"?

Just looking back at the outrageous conduct of the EPA: a.) They deemed low-level radiation to increase mortality, but rigorous and careful study has shown that low-level radiation exposure has no such effect on mortality risk. The human body repairs cell damage from low-levels of radiation. b.) They deem CO2 to be a pollutant in the atmosphere, even at 350 parts per million. They have made an issue out of mankind's trivial addition to the CO2 content of the atmosphere at (or below) 50 ppm over a century. c.) The EPA has been high-handed, mis-leading and scaring the public, usurping authority, launching frivolous regulatory lawsuits, mis-informing the courts, killing industry, killing jobs, and raising the general cost of living. d.) The EPA has demonstrated little (if any) understanding of science, including competence in the field of health physics. For example, the EPA has deemed any trace of plutonium to constitute a major and intolerable public health risk, yet plutonium occurs naturally in all uranium deposits and in all rocks bearing uranium such as pitchblende. Plutonium 239, the most common isotope of plutonium, has a half-life of 24,100 years, so it is all but non-radioactive. Therefore, any toxicity from plutonium is due to its chemistry and not its radioactivity.

[astonas]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

Thank you for your interesting and coherent post above.

I think there are several issues here: a.) What is a pollutant? b.) What concentration makes something toxic? c.) What gives government the right to stringently regulate everything, including natural but so-called and so-deemed "toxins" in the environment? d.) What gives govn't, in this case the EPA, the right to deem a natural substance to be "a pollutant"?

You're welcome! I am always glad to have a clear discussion. Thank you for your own courteous response.

I agree that there are several issues here. Let's tease them out together, one by one.

a.) They deemed low-level radiation to increase mortality, but rigorous and careful study has shown that low-level radiation exposure has no such effect on mortality risk. The human body repairs cell damage from low-levels of radiation.

This is not factually correct. The body can indeed repair minor damage to cells, and even certain types of damage to some RNA and DNA. But any given ionizing event in a DNA strand has the same nominal chance of producing damage that is irreparable, or even cancerous. Thus, as long as the radiation is both penetrating and ionizing (greater than a few electron volts in energy) it has the possibility to cause non-reparable DNA damage. Cancer is just one disease that is caused by this, and so ANY amount, even the naturally occurring background of ionizing radiation does indeed carry an associated finite mortality risk. This is why cancer will never go away, it can only be minimized. Once again, the question is not whether radiation is "safe" (no amount ever is) but how much risk we are willing to tolerate, and at what economic and personal cost. Clearly, we are not going to walk around wearing heavy lead shields all day. Nor are we willing to build unshielded nuclear reactors.

Your citation that there is "no mortality risk" merely means that the number of cases produced by certain levels of radiation is lower than the statistically meaningful noise floor associated with gathering data. Data is noisy for a large number of reasons, including the compounding of many forms of risk factors, so this noise is to some extent unavoidable. However, it is a mistake to interpret this as meaning that there is no danger. It can take as little as a single ionizing radiation event to turn a normal cell into a cancerous one, depending on the type of cancer. Once cancerous, the cell can reproduce until the organism is eventually destroyed. It is just a question of how likely it is that a given absorption event will result in the wrong kind of mutation, compared to how much it costs to minimize the number of total absorption events.

b.) They deem CO2 to be a pollutant in the atmosphere, even at 350 parts per million.

The issue with CO2, which of course is a major constituent of our atmosphere, is not one of concentration. CO2 is not toxic, unless there is enough of it in the gas one breathes that there is not sufficient oxygen, in which case damage is caused by oxygen deprivation.

The issue with CO2 and other greenhouse gasses is total quantity released, which collectively act to affect change by altering the earth's albedo, or solar energy reflection coefficient. Thus, even lower concentration emissions, when produced in sufficient volume, can be problematic. If I burn vast amounts of fossil fuels, but flow lots of air over them as they burn, the flow will lower the concentration of added CO2 in the output stream. But it will have no effect (well, technically it will actually increase slightly) the total amount of CO2 released.

They have made an issue out of mankind's trivial addition to the CO2 content of the atmosphere at (or below) 50 ppm over a century.

Again, here the issue is total amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere at a given time, rather than the percentage in a given release. (Though combustion does not produce less than 50ppm CO2). "Making an issue out of" something is an emotional term, so let's focus on the science here, and then come back to whether it is an issue.

Albedo is the ratio of reflected radiation (in this case by the atmosphere) to incident radiation upon it. If the total energy transmitted into the earth/atmosphere system is exactly that which the earth is capable of releasing through blackbody radiation and other mechanisms, the global temperature will remain broadly constant. If it is lower, the earth will (slowly, over time) cool. If it is higher, the earth will slowly and continuously warm. The key to this problem is the word EXACTLY equal. We have an earth that (depending on your belief system) was either created, or evolved to be in balance, at a temperature that can sustain life over much of its landmass. So maintaining that balance is critical to us as a species.

The albedos of the planets near us are measurable quantities. We can directly measure what temperature you end up with if you have an atmosphere, for example like Venus, or Mars. Their global temperatures are not accidental, but a reflection of the equilibrium reached between their incident solar radiation and their atmosphere's ability to reflect it.

Over time, CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, such as methane, enter our and other planets' atmospheres through both volcanic and meteorite additions, so without mitigation our atmosphere over the eons would in general be getting warmer and warmer. Indeed, if it were not for the existence over many eons of early, microscopic, life, earth by now would be far hotter, and completely uninhabitable.

Fortunately for us, over the last 3.8 billion years, this constant addition of external greenhouse gasses has been offset by regularly sequestering a portion of the circulating carbon underground, as biomass accumulates and is buried (to become in some cases fossil fuels.)

What we are now doing is releasing the carbon that has been sequestered over eons, not slowly (in planetary terms) but all at once, before the system even has a chance to form a new equilibrium temperature. It is no less than the sudden undoing of the very slow process that made Earth inhabitable in the first place.

From an atmospheric albedo perspective then, it is not the belief that greenhouse gas emission IS an issue that is unusual, but the idea that it is NOT an issue. Such an assertion requires a very high burden of proof indeed. It is only in the political arena that this is not the case.

c.) The EPA has been high-handed, mis-leading and scaring the public, usurping authority, launching frivolous regulatory lawsuits, mis-informing the courts, killing industry, killing jobs, and raising the general cost of living.

These are a less objective class of objections, based mostly on style. If you are saying that they should rely less on emotional appeals, I would be fine with that, as I am always in favor of objective debate over emotion. I would question whether they are using these methods more than their opposition, however. A more important question might be: could they be effective at fulfilling their mandate if they were less emotional, given that emotion and strong-arm tactics are how our political and economic system seems to be motivated?

In any event, each (bar one) in the litany of concerns you identify appear to be allegations of perspective, and therefore not pertinent to an objective discussion. The one objective complaint, that of raising the cost of living, is clearly true. It does cost more to live without fear of being poisoned. It always has, and always will. The only issue is how much is it worth to us to not have that fear, and whether the marginal per-capita cost required to regulate toxins is really unreasonable.

d.) The EPA has demonstrated little (if any) understanding of science, including competence in the field of health physics. For example, the EPA has deemed any trace of plutonium to constitute a major and intolerable public health risk, yet plutonium occurs naturally in all uranium deposits and in all rocks bearing uranium.

Again, this is factually incorrect, plutonium emits ionizing radiation, which I have discussed above. In this case, it emits alpha radiation, which carries great energy, but also has a larger capture cross-section than beta (electron) or gamma (electromagnetic) radiation. As such it is the worst form of radiation to ingest. In addition, it is a bone-seeking heavy metal, so it accumulates in the bones, and emits radiation into the marrow, which causes, among other things, leukemia. It is also in itself chemically toxic, though this is less relevant, because the LD50 is based on the extremely high radiation toxicity. And if that isn't enough, it forms spontaneously-combustible oxides and hydrides in the presence of moisture.

As to whether it is the EPA, or your other data sources that have less of an understanding of science and health physics, I agree that the example of the toxicity of plutonium discussed above is indicative. I have, however, come to a different conclusion than you have about their relative strengths.

As it happens I have had the dubious honor of handling small quantities of highly toxic materials, including both plutonium and beryllium in my professional work. I have also had the great honor of working directly (though not on technical matters) with the discoverer of plutonium, Glenn Seaborg. If you had seen his incredibly gnarled hands before he passed away, and observed his long-term health issues, you too, might be convinced that it is not something to get close to, regardless of quantity.

Once again, the fact that it occurs in nature is irrelevant. It is still dangerous to bring it out of the ground, and vastly more dangerous when purified.

We can now return to your initial, overarching questions:

I think there are several issues here: a.) What is a pollutant? b.) What concentration makes something toxic? c.) What gives government the right to stringently regulate everything, including natural but so-called and so-deemed "toxins" in the environment? d.) What gives govn't, in this case the EPA, the right to deem a natural substance to be "a pollutant"?

a.) What is a pollutant?

a.) Semantic definitions are unimportant compared to functional ones. Since you ask, however, I will throw out the following suggestion (only my own).
"A pollutant is a material which is released by man's activity, and has the potential to do harm." As I said though, any semantic distinctions one may have with that phrasing are likely to be irrelevant. What matters is not the definition, but how it is employed.

b.) What concentration makes something toxic?

b.) The concentration that makes something toxic varies widely, and depends not only on the substance itself, but also on the pathway of exposure. (Some things are vastly more dangerous when inhaled, others when swallowed, still others when exposed to skin.) Therefore the sensible answer is not an absolute, but a relative statement: the concentration is toxic when it begins to adversely affect the organism's function. Any science-based approach uses this as a basis, and in spite of your impressions of the EPA, their work is generally included in that category, to the extent that it is spared from industrial lobbying.

c.) What gives government the right to stringently regulate everything, including natural but so-called and so-deemed "toxins" in the environment?

c.) The right of the government to regulate toxins comes from its responsibility to defend the people of the United States. It is precisely the same justification that permits it to hold an army (to defend against external threats) or prosecute criminals (to defend against criminal threats). It doesn't much matter if you get killed by a murderer or a release of a poisonous gas cloud. Either way you are dead, and it is the principle job of government to provide a REASONABLE level of protection from such things. What is reasonable, as stated before, depends on a cost/benefit analysis, based on probabilities and significance of outcomes. What is not reasonable is complete abdication of this responsibility, simply because it is indirect.

What gives govn't, in this case the EPA, the right to deem a natural substance to be "a pollutant"?

d.) The right of government to deem a natural substance as a pollutant stems from the fact that "natural" is an irrelevant property when it comes to managing risk. A natural toxin is no less dangerous than a man-made one, and so should logically be treated the same way by a government when it comes to extraction and processing. Furthermore, substances like plutonium, which are indeed natural, are not naturally present in sufficient concentrations to be of concern. Their toxicity stems from their concentration, which is entirely a product of man's processing, and therefore subject to governmental jurisdiction.

HERE'S THE IMPORTANT BIT: :-)

Now that we've beaten this dead EPA horse into a bloody pulp on the ground, what do you say to letting it lie, and turn back to something we can all agree is more relevant to why we are here: learning how to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our assets in the tumultuous times ahead. I'm not in any way associated with the environmental movement, so I certainly don't have a dog in this fight, and I'm sure you agree that this subject has very little relevance to why we are viewing this site.