In response to post #50

Hey Aqua do you really think nature cleans the crap that we spew out of our tailpipes and our factories everday? Is that why we have the greenhouse effect and why the ozone layer is being depleted?

Yes, it does clean it. In earlier decades we greatly exceeded what the environment was capable of handling, but we have since reduced pollution to the point that the environment can cope with it. The air has cleaned, the water has cleaned, the lakes are no longer lifeless, the forests are coming back, the environment is not only cleaning all the crap we spew out of our tailpipes and factories every day, it is overcoming the pollution and recovering!

The greenhouse effect is not proven, indeed, the world has often been much much warmer, it's a cycle. Volcanos easily put more pollution and heat into air than all of mankind's activities combined.

Well aqua (or should I call you neo) wake up and look around you. We are destroying this planet in the name of progress and money.

Kona, in conclusion, while we used to be destroying the planet as you said, that has taken a dramatic reversal since the 1970's. True, we shouldn't sit back and be satisfied with what we've already done, we should keep at it. But we're winning the war against pollution, not losing it.

As for the Ozone hole, that is one thing I will grant you. But that is also being handled and scientists expect it to recover in a decade or so.

it's Two now, it split, neat huh?

as far as the green house affect not being proven, well, Bush did in fact kill the research all ready to be put into publication adn setup a new study

guess he didn't like what was in the papers



oh and he turned the Industrial Machine loose on the environment and a number of other things that will in fact set back any gains made since the 70's...





Hell on a rainy day you can't breath in Houston

or see without your eyes burning out of your skull



and ten miles south of the border in Meixco it is a toxic industrial dumping ground of US corporations who moved production to Mexico to create jobs in the USA


ouch....

I've followed what Bush has done on the environment. He sure as hell hasn't been a friend of the environment, but he hasn't been a disaster either.

Of all the cities in the US, I believe Houston and a couple of other Texas places are the only place that haven't made dramatic improvements. They're still better that they used to be and are better than other cities (such as L.A.) used to be.

I grew up in Pennsylvania and remember the dead forests and lifeless lakes from my childhood. I care about the environment, and have seen it dramatically improve in my short lifetime. Yes, there are problems, but things are much better than they used to be and will continue getting better. Unlike many environmentalists, I realize that there is a wide gulf between the enviro propaganda and reality. Of course, the propaganda serves an important purpose, but it's stupid not to acknowledge (sp?) gains made.

Your turn Plural

Two dramatics in one post, change one to 'signifigant'

"
March 18, 2003: On the brink of war and with the nation's threat level again at Code Orange, the Bush administration still has yet to take appropriate action to reduce the risk of terrorist attacks on the nation's 15,000 chemical plants. The General Accounting Office, Congress' nonpartisan investigative agency, released a report warning that chemical facilities remain highly vulnerable despite the post-9/11 focus on homeland security. GAO said that reducing levels of toxic chemicals on site would make these facilities less attractive as terrorist targets. GAO faulted the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to invoke its statutory responsibilities (under the Clean Air Act) to gather much-needed vulnerability information and reduce the risk.

Nationwide, 123 chemical facilities could release clouds of toxic gas deadly enough to harm more than a million people in surrounding areas, according to EPA. There are 700 plants that endanger 100,000 people or more, and 3,000 that endanger 10,000 or more. GAO chided the administration for its scattershot approach to protecting these sites from terrorism. Since Sept. 11, the EPA has issued security alerts to plants and visited a few dozen facilities; the Homeland Security Department has assessed security at 11 facilities.

In announcing the Bush administration's new "Operation Liberty Shield" -- calling on federal, state and local governments and private industries to help bolster security of the nation's "critical infrastructure" -- Homeland Security Department Secretary Tom Ridge said, "[t]here is no question that when we take a look at a chemical facility, the possibility that terrorists could use that economic asset and turn it into a weapon is something that we need to be concerned about and are concerned about." Yet, to date, the administration has relied only on voluntary efforts by industry to secure their plants -- an approach GAO found insufficient. GAO recommended that the administration propose legislation "to require these facilities to expeditiously assess their vulnerability to terrorist attacks and, where necessary, require these facilities to take corrective action." Last year, after an intensive lobbying effort by industry groups, the Bush administration opted not to incorporate into its homeland security legislation a Senate bill that would have mandated better security measures at chemical plants.

"More than a year and a half since 9/11, the government has done next to nothing to ensure chemical plant security," said Jon Devine, an attorney with NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). "The best way to safeguard Americans is to make plants less vulnerable to terrorism by replacing toxic chemicals when safer technologies are readily available."
"

mere propaganda, I know....

"
March 13, 2003: Somebody must have missed a memo at the Environmental Protection Agency. Less than two weeks after EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman told a Senate committee that she knows of no incident in which environmental protections have ever hampered the military's ability to train, her agency's enforcement chief, J.P. Suarez, testified in support of legislation that would exempt the military from federal environmental and public health laws. "We believe the [Bush] administration's bill appropriately takes account of the interests of the American people in military readiness and in environmental protection," Suarez said at a House Armed Services Committee. The Pentagon is asking Congress to approve its "Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative," which would grant the military sweeping exemptions from the Clean Air Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Superfund cleanup law, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and Endangered Species Act.

"This is an outrageous retreat on environmental and pubic health protections, which begs the question who is running the show at EPA, anyway, Whitman or her underlings?" said Alys Campaigne, NRDC's legislative director. "Giving the military blanket immunity is unwarranted because the laws protecting our air, water, wildlife and public lands already contain exemptions for national security."

"

March 10, 2003: In a rather slick deal for oil and gas drillers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency exempted that industry from a new water regulation aimed at reducing polluted runoff. Under the EPA's phase II stormwater pollution rule, issued during the Clinton administration, construction sites between 1 and 5 acres are now required to obtain a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. But the agency gave the oil and gas industry two years to comply, and will it studies whether a permanent exemption is warranted. Six U.S. Senators promptly fired off a letter to EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman, saying there is "voluminous evidence" of an oil and gas industry review before the rule was created in 1999.

"The Bush administration has found another way to help out its oil and gas buddies," said NRDC senior attorney Sharon Buccino, "by excusing the industry from complying with a rule that is critical to reducing pollution in America's streams and waterways."
"

"
February 11, 2003: The Bush administration plans to relax rules requiring chemical plants, pulp mills, auto factories, steel mills and other industries to curb their toxic air pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a set of new rules to exempt these businesses from current requirements to reduce toxic fumes from their plants to the maximum extent possible. The new rules also would allow businesses to self-regulate their operations using less rigorous controls.

For the first time since the Clean Air Act was amended in 1990, EPA is prepared to shift from stringent control of toxic emissions to allow companies to avoid pollution restrictions. The six industrial categories affected include brick and clay manufacturing; plywood and wood products makers; stationary backup engines; auto-paint shops; industrial boilers and process heaters; and gas-fired turbines. Environmentalists decried the proposed changes as an attack on the Clean Air Act and a rollback of public health protections. They also pointed out that many of EPA's proposals are contained in so-called white papers drafted by industry.

"EPA's skewed twisted interpretation of federal law and its unwillingness to enforce existing clean air standards is part of the Bush administration's overall effort to rewrite federal environmental protections for industry," said John Walke, director of NRDC's clean air program. "The net effect will be increased emissions from these industries, resulting in an increased cancer risk." Walke noted that the emissions from the affected industrial sources can lead to cancer, brain damage or even harm fetal development.

EPA proposed the new rules in September of last year. Public comment could last until mid-March, with the agency expected to finalize the rules by the end of the year.
"

oh bunches and bunches of that silly old propaganda..

serioulsy though...

there is much more, and it is not propaganda, it is fact... remove the spin and the twists, and you are still dealing with facts, these things did happen and much more has and will in the future...

Granted he must feel it is in the best interests of Industry, and that must mean it is good for the economy so that must mean it is right ofr the people... I don't have a clue why or what he thinks, so I won't presume to agrue that...

But the actions, yes... the exact things that have brought around those same changes you mentioned that started in the 70's are being reversed all the time, and we will be stuck with it all over again in the future...

anyway....

it's all propaganda...

Hey aqua chew on this:
plants and trees provide us oxygen.
We exhale carbon dioxide.
The plants and trees breathe the carbon dioxide.
That is the cycle. What you are missing is this point: plants and trees DO NOT breathe in OR convert CARBON MONOXIDE (tailpipe gases, factory gases, cigareete smoke, ect.) Into oxygen. In fact, carbon monoxide kills plants and trees. Why would it not? It is in cigarettes and it kills us to.
You need to do some research.
Yes the earth has cycles of hot and cold. What we have done is accelerated this by putting to much of the greenhouse gases in the air. The earths hot and cold cycles usually take millions of years. Yet every year the temperature keeps rising.
All we can do is sit back and watch the earth cook beause of fossil fuels.
i have heard the only way the earth can heal itself is to start over begining with a ice age long after we are gone.

And by the way: Friends don't let friends drive forign cars.

Adding on to post #103:
On a hot day in Portland, Oregon, if you stood on the highest bridge you could not see downtown because of all the smog. It gets worse every year. You would think that if nature converts this stuff it would not be there year after year.

That really sucks, I've always had this vision of how beautiful Oregon would be at all times...

Up in Maine it's not so bad until you get near a mill towm, you can smell the craft (what they call the treatment process and it's stench, for pressure treated lumber and paper) from miles away. It also kind of soaks into everything so eveyrone and everything smells like it. The run off from the plants was so bad the EPA put up signs when I was a kid and we were not allowed to swim in the river. yeah right a bunch of kids?, and we used to sneak over the blacks bridge (train trussel) into Canada and swim around the bend right before the dam where we thought no one could see us. Used to get caught now and then. But on the other side of the dam, nothing lived in the water for a few miles, and you couldn't eat the Salman that was caught for miles mire down river.

It was finally getting clean about ten years ago, there wasn't any yellow or greenish foam below the river anymore and the fish were coming back pretty good. I wonder if that is all gong to change back again?

Mercury, Led, Cyanide and so many other things ended up in that river as run off from the different processes for paper, chip board, 2x4 and other stock lumbar, plywood, and that wasn't even the junk that was coming out of the smoke stacks, Gerogia Pacific really made a huge mess of things. But what can they really do to them considering if they ever forced a shut down of GP and other miles until they got everything cleaned up and just 70% safe for production it would kill whole areas. In Woodland there are something like 15 or better towmships that depend on that company it has five different plants in and around Woodland. Everyone either works at the mill or in a service industry job supporting those who work at the mill.

Jaxenville Florida gets pretty nasty from the mill there also, though I haven't been around it so I am not sure how nasty.

how many tons of hardwood trees are clear cut everyday in the rian forests? Just clear cut do to nothing and the ground is left to turn to mud without any real value for planting and such because the rains wash everything that would be good for that away?

I'm not a tree hugger by far, to many of my family make thier living and have htier financial existance depending on lumber, from cutting cord wood and hauling it out themselves with thier own skidders and then trucking it the miles tot he mills, or working directly for the plants that make up the mills. A couple even work on with one running the crews that do the sappling replanting which the mill is very good about becuase they know if they cut without replanting sooner of later they end up with nothing to cut. That is kind of like painting yourself into a corner and they are not stupid if anything.

At the same tim eif you look at the different industries that have move out of the country, depending on where they set up shop, they have ended up making toxic dumping the norm if the country doesn't have any rule or regulations to deal with it. After al lthey are not breaking the law though they know it is wrong, it saves them millions each year

Did you know that if I leave a loaded gun out and someone picks it up and shoots themself, ends up dying I am probably going to face some serious charges and be looking at jail time. If it happens twice I am going to be heading to prision.

Yet if I own a industrial plant, OSHA comes in and tells me that different things need to be changed for safety and I ignore it because of the costs, etc, and someone dies I will be fined and that is it, any number of people could end up dying fomr the exact samething and beyond civil suit I am still only looking at fines, and not criminal charges, fully knowing people could and have died because I did not comply with the safety changes demanded by OSHA...

wild...

Good Points to consider for everyone. Especially the last 2 paragraphs.

kona0197, how hard are you hosing that Hemi to make 965 HP? What kind of Tranny is backing it, and what ratio rear end is in it? I assume you have a 10 point roll cage in it, because there is no way a car geared to handle that horsepower would be on the road (since it would get like 7mpg.) What does it run at the track? I know how many hp it takes to propel a Capri to a 10 sec quarter, so I'm pretty curious. KarmaGirl thinks that maybe your horsepower calculations may be off. Got some dyno readings to show on that bad boy BTW, we run Chevys in this household. Even the Capri has a Chevy engine

(Sorry about that whole end being in red- wasn't intended...you would think that I would know how this site works by now )

mouse or RAT

has to be Rock Crusher on the shift

course you can not out shift an auto with air shifter, so they say

I love the street up on the causeways leading to the Gandy and Courtney Campbell bridges...

Late night starting on friday night and ending early Sunday morning you see cars driven in, trailered in, name it it shows up. SuperBikes with Nitro and turbos, rear tires the size of car tires with drag bars sticking out three feet behind them.

427 Rats, 302 Z28s, 396 Chevells 426 HEMI's 440 dual fours, 383 6 packs 360 Challengers and 340 AAR Cudas, GTX's Darts,
Vettes, 69 Firebirds, RS SS Camaros 455 GS Buicks AMX's Javlins, 34 Fords and Chevys, a couple of Willys Coups...
dang, street is sweet

There is a guy who runs a 392 Hemi powered AMX that has bars that stick straight down which are weilded to the roll cage and it stands almost straight up in the air doing hole shots and burn outs when he is playing around, but when he is lined up it pretty much hunkers low and takes off like a rocket.

The new 6 and 4 bangers that have been gone through pushing 350 - 400 hp, talk about a go cart !!!
Even some VW's doing 9's and 10's being trailered in, some doing 12's - 14's driving in...

Want to see someones jaw drop, line a tweaked Bug up against a new Firebird or z28 and have it walk the dog on it...



Cops break it up every now and then, but they pretty much leave it alone cause no one is messing up and there isn't any street drags on the city streets, the old guys and gal's keep things right. If someone breaks the rules they pretty much don't come around and are not welcome back unless they can prove themselves, second chance broken and they are gone, c-ya!

Then there are the Car clubs at the 50's and 60's Hamburger Drive through places. Some really nice customs and such. Florida is cool that way I guess... Oh and the cruises are sweet, thing is people have to keep it under control or everyone looses

Sooooo I should'nt get the Dodge Durango Hemi in 2005

?

I know I'm getting my Volvo XC-90.
Sorry kona, I have a choice to choose the car I like. Its the American way



Sooo... I'm geting my Volvo, an Audi TT and A6, and a Escalade.

I'll change the engine so they will all be running HEMI's.

I'd like that sucker, well the power plant anyways

zoom zoom, course it wouldn't stay stock, sorry not enough ponys!!!

Ah, come on, the HEMI was such a solid design everyone had one, GM and FOrd also, 427 Highriser, the RAT's Mopar didnna have the corner on em...

Just the copywrite !!