Trump's Response to COVID-19

Yea, I'm not paying for a news link. The rest are from NBC and CNN with sensational language.

As for the rest, I now see what the fuss is about; Trump is rolling back Obama's "suggested changes". Which were to net a savings of 1,400 lives over so many decades.

Also, we're not going to be rid of coal for another century unless we find an asteroid made of uranium conveniently slamming into the moon. It doesn't appear Trump is planning to actually roll back emissions compliance numbers. He's just not being sucked into the "we have to do this NOW" craze. In the mean time, GE has a plant that's 60% fuel efficient because driving fuel efficiency is good for business. Not because the government told them to build better machines, just cleaner machines. A lot of other industries only went for clean and let efficiency go to hell (like automobiles).

Like it or not, people themselves will have the greatest effect on pollution, not government bickering. After all, the government's original concern with fuel efficiency had nothing to do with pollution. It was about saving a buck buying less foreign fuel.

And where do endangered species factor into pollution and emissions? For the record, methane is not toxic.

And our bodies are quite resilient when you consider that all of us are the children of over 2,000 nuclear weapons explosions on the planet. So I have faith, in God's nukes!

 

Don't get me wrong, insider trading sucks, and should be illegal. But what really kills me about this is the senators had advice that this was going to fuck us all up in February, and they took it seriously enough to look after themselves, but didn't take any steps which could have maybe eased our pain now. Withholding that and not planning for it as a senator is fucking evil.

 

People are waking up. Governments can’t keep you safe. Safety and survival was always up to you.

 

Yeah... Total chaos is always better.

 

Yeah totally agree, that's where I was coming from too. They knew this was coming and looked out for their own self interests

 

Communities can form without government to bully

 

Yes actually, I do. For several reasons. First of all, methane estimates are precarious at best. And not all of the gas that comes out of the ground can be used for fuel because it's laden with corrosive byproducts. So they are burned uselessly at the top of a refinery flare because there's no safe way to store/stash it. I also think fracking is a monumentally bad idea.

Synthetic gas is a better alternative and the purity can be controlled without refining. And, it's made of coal (IGCC). The plant in Meridian Mississippi held great promise for coal gasification and CO2 sequestration. But it was hampered by spiraling costs and vendor issues and now operates like a regular methane burning plant.

One of the more foolish notions is the idea that coal mines are shut down "forever". Coal can wait for centuries if need be. It has no expiration date that humans will likely ever see.

I'm encouraged to see so much investment being made in solar plants and pumped storage, but none of that is to a scale we need to replace our combustion plants. And that is driven by our demand, which is driven by our population.

We're not even close to the "end" of coal.

 

I do think he was a little slow to pick up on the seriousness of this "CCP virus" (Chinese Communist Party). However, I think he compares favorably to the Obama administration's response to a flu ten years ago. Still, I wonder about the wisdom of shutting down so much of the economy in an effort to slow the spread of this CCP virus.

But you are spot on when you note that many Dems (ok, you didn't say Dems) just want Trump out of office, and resort to all manner of deception to do it. This article sheds some light on that claim:

The Top 10 Lies About President Trump’s Response to the Coronavirus

 

I know he's trying to, but it will be in court for years. It's the same point I was making before, what use is a cleaner vehicle that uses more fuel? It's political at best. I'm accustomed to states enacting their own regulations, Georgia's emissions system is as tight as the lottery.

Perhaps this fight is long overdue. If states prefer to deal with this, then what do we need the EPA for? Weird to think that California might take the lead on the issue of states rights.

 

political suicide? he's got the republicans supporting him. btw, he doesn't need congressional approval to change rules in a given department,

didn't say it could

now, you're being really naive, or your trying to play me.

 

If I have to explain it then that tells me that you don't know what the purpose of the EPA is.

 

Safety and survival in the face of an emergency require coordination. While some are hunkering down in their bedrooms, others are rubbing shoulders at the local bar. With such rugged individualism at work, we're bound for extinction.

 

I would say in most cases.

communities? Is that like a commune, komrade?

 

One thing that the world can learn from all of this is that we cannot rely on China or any one country to be the manufacturing empire for all our basic goods. It was hard enough to find a face mask manufacturer that didn’t make their masks in China. Now China is also threatening an embargo of pharmaceutical medicines toward certain countries. Every nation needs their own industry in case of a global crisis

 

Yes, it was formed because the states can't be trusted to enact pollution controls the entire country needed. At the time. As a nation we have matured and quite obviously outgrown the need for an umbrella enforcement agency like this. All the EPA should be doing is research and making recommendations.

However, that does open the federal government up to having to mediate state-to-state complaints. We'll never have a 6-Sigma government. Especially hovering around 0.6-Sigma now.

 

and the controls have been relaxed under the trump administration. You say the air is cleaner, but what about the waterways?