I'm part of that demographic, and I believe that the world is billions of years old. Those that believe that the world is only 6,000 years old are only a minority in our group. Assuming that the rest of us also hold those views is like assuming that you strongly believe in eradicating capitalism, as a good number of people on your side of the argument have argued for in the past.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/...bal_warmi.html
Originally Posted by herfacechair
My point was to exclude the dumb fucks on your side who do believe that the earth is only 6k years old from the conversation.
My view on the subject is that pollution should be regulated because it cost more for future generations to clean up the mess than it would have not to have polluted in the first place.
May I suggest Jarrod Diamond book on the subject...the title of which escapes me now.
So yes I think there should be regulation but not because of climate change.
Have you ever heard of acid rain? The program to cut it?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-c...b_1507392.html
Acid rain, according to
data I came across last week from the University of Delaware, dropped remarkably in Lewes, Delaware, between 1990 and 2010, a decline attributed to emission cuts enforced through the
acid rain program. How did that happen? Funny you should ask.
The program to address
the growing acidity in rain falling in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s was established in the Clean Air Act amendments signed into law by President George H. W. Bush in 1990. The relevant section,
Title IV, required large cuts in the emissions of sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides from power plants "to reduce the adverse effects of acid deposition." These emissions cuts would have the added benefit of reducing
fine particle pollution and
ozone, which can lead to
aggravated heart and lung problems, including asthma, irregular heartbeats, and nonfatal heart attacks. The cuts would also reduce
haze, which limits visibility in places where visibility is important --our national parks, for example.
Quite controversial at the time, Title IV prescribed a cap-and-trade mechanism for reaching a nationwide target for sulfur dioxide emissions -- controversial for acid rain then, controversial for climate change now. Another source of controversy was the
program's supposed costs: industry projected them to go as high as $1,000-$1,500 per ton of sulfur dioxide reduced, while forecasting a
hike from all the Clean Air Act amendments on many states' electricity prices of up to 10 percent [pdf]. Other early projections, from sources ranging from industry to government, estimated that the annual cost of compliance for the sulfur dioxide portion of the program would be between
$2.4 billion and $5 billion [pdf] for 1995-1999.
Bottom line, said many, especially those in industry: too expensive.
So What Happened With Our Acid Rain Problems?
Fortunately we are in a position to answer that question, at least in part, because the government had the foresight to establish the
National Acid Deposition Program (NADP), which among other things maintains a national network of sites monitoring air quality and the composition of precipitation throughout the country.
In the case of the acidity of rain, the results are striking. Over a period of 16 years, from 1994 to 2010, we have seen a decrease in the concentration of acid-forming compounds in rain falling on the Northeast, where ecological impacts of acid rain were most severe, and in the Southeast