Back to the Bad Old Days

Michael Cain

Michael is a systems analyst, with a taste for obscure applied math. He's interested in energy supplies, the urban/rural divide, regional political differences in the US, and map-like things. Bicycling, and fencing (with swords, that is) act as stress relief.

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19 Responses

  1. George Turner says:

    The West’s methane problem is that they eat too many bean burritos. We can stop that and vastly reduce methane emissions, and that’s something that the EPA should approach with a zero tolerance policy.

    The East knows where the methane is coming from, and it’s people out West. Their noxious emissions are a grave threat to all of humanity. What cannot continue, without government intervention, won’t.

    For those still in touch with reality, methane emissions are such an ongoing thing that even in the 1700’s cisterns had to have special ventilation requirements so they didn’t have methane explosions. Pretty much every eastern lake smells like farts and septic waste as they bubble methane from all the rotting leaves.Report

  2. Damon says:

    Meh,
    The Trump admin can always say “we tried but the damn libs and the swamp delayed us”.Report

  3. Oscar Gordon says:

    There are lots of land use\water rules he could focus on that would give him wins, but Trump goes for a rule with broad public support? I think he’s doesn’t care about winning political victories.Report

    • Morat20 in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      I don’t think he knows what is popular or not. But he’s surrounded by a lot of folks happy to spin him a yarn about how X is really unpopular “among the people”, and how is he to know any different?

      And bluntly, he’s always been a con-man at heart — he’s for whatever the person he’s speaking to is for, because he wants to close the deal. Get his money. Make the sale. Worse yet, after 70 years of this sort of thing, he really seems to form a lot of opinions based solely on whomever he’s spoken to last. There’s not a lot he won’t happily change his mind on, and act like he never believed otherwise. (Hell, he seems to believe he’s always believed whatever the new thing is)

      If he’s got Pruitt telling him the rule is “wildly unpopular” because “deregulation” that’s what he’ll believe.

      Who is gonna tell him different? Morning Joe? His army of twitter bots (half his followers or more)? The “failing” NYT? His die-hard rally supporters, chosen for the depth of their fandom?Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to Morat20 says:

        Probably wasn’t even Pruitt, but a lobbyist (Pruitt is from OK, he won’t be ignorant of public opinion on the topic, although I suppose he could be passing along the desires of a lobbyist).Report

        • …although I suppose he could be passing along the desires of a lobbyist).

          Pruitt has a long history of pursuing the interests of the fossil-fuel industry, particularly policies favored by the big companies in Oklahoma and Texas. There seem to be limits, though, even in Oklahoma: last year the Oklahoma Corporate Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry, issued new restrictions on fracking and wastewater disposal via injection in response to a rash of modest earthquakes in the areas where such activities are most prevalent.Report

  4. Michael Cain says:

    It is amazing that almost every time something of mine gets posted, events take me away. I’ll be granddaughter-sitting until this evening.Report

  5. North says:

    Of all the various rules to tackle, why go after such a photogenic (locally and nationally) one?Report

  6. Joe Sal says:

    Well written essay Michael. Excellent work.

    MeanwhileReport

      • George Turner in reply to Joe Sal says:

        If the parks want to reduce ozone and VOCs, they need to cut down their worst polluting tree species. Under bright sunlight, many trees are notorious air polluters. Gum, poplar, and oak, for example, emit about 15 times as much VOCs as birch and six times as much as cedar. The VOCs combine with NOx compounds to form ozone.

        Of course, the Park Service could simply cut down all the trees in all their parks. The Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Mojave, and Big Bend are wonderful and popular parks that are almost devoid of vegetation, so a barren Yosemite and Yellowstone should do just fine, while Sequoia could just install giant fake fiberglass trees.Report

        • Joe Sal in reply to George Turner says:

          Water vapor is part of the ozone problem also! What we need to do there is drain the oceans and put them in these really big sealed containers, then run massive dehumidifiers.
          Did I mention pave? Pave the hell out of everything, massive parking lots. All that parking needed for the large population centers, just move them out to the national parks, and use maglev trains to get everyone to their car.
          (I dig most of your comments, even if I don’t respond to many of ’em.)Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Joe Sal says:

      For me, right now, it’s all from Canada.Report

      • Joe Sal in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        Hell man, I’m just trying to figure out where the nothing burger ends and where the something burger begins.

        (Also I have a general fondness for Canada peoples (but not their government). )Report