Monday, April 18, 2005
Pollution...
ITEM ONE
It's about time they went after this environmental disaster. Anyone who pays attention to genuine environmental problems instead of trumped up political hype knows that the Mayak nuclear processing plant in the Ural mountains of Russia may be the most polluted place on the planet. Why is there so little news on it? Could it be that is really is more about politics than pollution? Just a thought.
ITEM TWO
As evidence of my thesis from above consider these two articles. CNN, of all places, has a piece about the controversial nature of how much global warming actually is taking place. They try to downplay the controversy, but leave out the adjectives and pay attention to the information and you will see that even before we can get to the question of how much affect manmade emissions have on temperature rise, we have to decide if it will rise enough to matter.
JunkScience via FOXNews examines the pure political posturing behind suggestions of a global warming tax. Science has little to do with this.
ITEM THREE
Apparently, the peasantry of China is worried about pollution. At least if this NYTimes report of a Chinese protest from early last week is to be believed. But somehow, I think the picture is a little more complex than a first glance might lead on to believe.
Couple of facts: there are some places in China that are really polluted, I've been there -- the government and the populace could care less, at least in my opinion. Secondly, most of the industrial development in the country has been done with foreign investment, and is still at least partially foreign owned.
As we all know later this past week massive protests have broken out against the Japanese in China. The latest, that same NYTimes reports yesterday, was "allowed" by the government.
Is it at all possible that the "pollution" protests were really early anti-Japanese protests (they built a lot of plants there) dressed up to get positive press coverage. And is it even further possible that all of this protesting is not only allowed, but actually encouraged by the government to create a pretext under which it can seize all those foreign owned factories, or at least the Japanese ones? Just wondering -- it's not like the Chinese have an ancient history of xenophobia or anything.
ITEM FOUR
NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) backfires, at least according to this FOXNews piece which notes the connection between rising gasoline prices and the lack of refining capacity in the US. Environmental PR guy Cheat Seeking Missles wonders if the rising prices aren't a purposeful ploy to change public opinion to allow some refining capacity to be built.
ITEM FIVE
Now they are literally faking environmental stories. Cheat Seeking Missles opines that the fact that the entirely fabricated story survived editing is a result of MSM bias.
Sometimes I just want to tell the organizations and the government and the press to get out of the way and let us do what is real and necessary to deal with pollution. The politics get in the way so much. Alas....Dream on blogboy.
It's about time they went after this environmental disaster. Anyone who pays attention to genuine environmental problems instead of trumped up political hype knows that the Mayak nuclear processing plant in the Ural mountains of Russia may be the most polluted place on the planet. Why is there so little news on it? Could it be that is really is more about politics than pollution? Just a thought.
ITEM TWO
As evidence of my thesis from above consider these two articles. CNN, of all places, has a piece about the controversial nature of how much global warming actually is taking place. They try to downplay the controversy, but leave out the adjectives and pay attention to the information and you will see that even before we can get to the question of how much affect manmade emissions have on temperature rise, we have to decide if it will rise enough to matter.
JunkScience via FOXNews examines the pure political posturing behind suggestions of a global warming tax. Science has little to do with this.
ITEM THREE
Apparently, the peasantry of China is worried about pollution. At least if this NYTimes report of a Chinese protest from early last week is to be believed. But somehow, I think the picture is a little more complex than a first glance might lead on to believe.
Couple of facts: there are some places in China that are really polluted, I've been there -- the government and the populace could care less, at least in my opinion. Secondly, most of the industrial development in the country has been done with foreign investment, and is still at least partially foreign owned.
As we all know later this past week massive protests have broken out against the Japanese in China. The latest, that same NYTimes reports yesterday, was "allowed" by the government.
Is it at all possible that the "pollution" protests were really early anti-Japanese protests (they built a lot of plants there) dressed up to get positive press coverage. And is it even further possible that all of this protesting is not only allowed, but actually encouraged by the government to create a pretext under which it can seize all those foreign owned factories, or at least the Japanese ones? Just wondering -- it's not like the Chinese have an ancient history of xenophobia or anything.
ITEM FOUR
NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) backfires, at least according to this FOXNews piece which notes the connection between rising gasoline prices and the lack of refining capacity in the US. Environmental PR guy Cheat Seeking Missles wonders if the rising prices aren't a purposeful ploy to change public opinion to allow some refining capacity to be built.
ITEM FIVE
Now they are literally faking environmental stories. Cheat Seeking Missles opines that the fact that the entirely fabricated story survived editing is a result of MSM bias.
Sometimes I just want to tell the organizations and the government and the press to get out of the way and let us do what is real and necessary to deal with pollution. The politics get in the way so much. Alas....Dream on blogboy.
