The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as expected, on Monday declared greenhouse gases a danger to public health, a decision that could soon lead to new emissions regulations for businesses across the economy.

The "endangerment finding" announced by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is necessary to move ahead on new emissions standards for cars due out in March 2010. Made under the Clean Air Act, it also opens up large emitters such as power plants, oil refineries, chemical plants and metal smelters to regulations that limit their output of carbon dioxide and other gases.

"These long overdue findings cement 2009's place in history as the year when the U.S. government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform," Ms. Jackson said.

The controversial decision, proposed by the administration earlier this year, comes as a global climate summit opens in Copenhagen. It gives the administration leverage in its negotiations and puts pressure on Congress to pass a bill that cuts greenhouse gases in a more economically efficient way.

Though the House has passed such a bill, the Senate has faced a number of political hurdles.

Environmentalists celebrated the announcement. "This is the most significant step the federal government has taken on global warming," said Emily Figdor, director for Environment America's federal global-warming program. "The stage is now set for [the] EPA to hold the biggest global-warming polluters accountable."

Some lawmakers and groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers warned the decision could bring the entire economy to a halt, not only regulating large emitters within months, but also opening other mobile sources and smaller emitters to regulation.

"With double-digit unemployment and over 3.5 million jobs already lost this year, the administration inexplicably continues to push for a job-killing national energy tax—either through legislation or regulation," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said.

However, Ms. Jackson maintains "there are ways to sensibly move forward on regulations," and she said the agency has insured that small and medium-sized businesses "will not be regulated."

Without any cost analyses of new greenhouse-gas regulations, it is difficult to estimate what the actual impact could be on the economy. Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the utility industry group Edison Electric Institute, pointed to cost predictions for federal legislation as a guide to the cost. Estimates for legislation vary between $100 a year to $1,000 a year extra for families, and such legislation is specially designed to moderate costs.

"The only certainty is that EPA regulation would be far more expensive than congressional-designed legislation," Mr. Riedinger contends.

Although industry officials say no economic study of the impacts of greenhouse-gas regulations under the Clean Air Act has been published, the EPA strongly challenges dire economic assertions.

Ms. Jackson indicated the agency would soon finalize a new "tailoring rule" that will set a greenhouse-gas-emissions threshold for regulators at 25,000 tons a year. This is designed to target the largest emitters in the country.

The EPA says that would mean around 13,600 coal-burning power stations, crude refineries, metal smelters and other industrial facilities would come under existing regulations.

Specifically, for any new construction or modification that would affect greenhouse-gas emissions, companies would be required to apply for permits that include the "best available technology." The EPA is seen finalizing what is considered the best available technology in 2011.

Asked when the agency would draft new regulations for existing large emitting facilities, Ms. Jackson declined to give a timeline.

Industry lawyers say if the EPA finalizes its auto-emissions rule by March 31, as expected, regulation of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide would automatically start 60 days later.

Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA air administrator under the George W. Bush administration and now head of the Bracewell & Giuliani Environmental Strategies Group, said this is the first time the agency has ever made a standalone endangerment finding. He thinks it was a political decision.

"It's clearly designed to set the stage for the Copenhagen conference," Mr. Holmstead said.

Previously, the EPA had synchronized endangerment determinations with its rule-makings.

But provisions in the EPA's tailoring rule may mean the 25,000-tons-a-year threshold won't apply in many states.

Peter Glaser, a lawyer representing utilities at the firm Troutman Sanders LLP in Washington, said the EPA tailoring proposal explicitly says that federal law doesn't preempt state laws on the major pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act. According to the EPA, many states have a 100-ton-threshold level for operating permits and 250-ton level for construction permits. If those levels apply, they would affect one million to four million facilities across the country, the EPA said.

"This is certainly not an ending," Ms. Jackson said. "We will continue to work under the Clean Air Act."
—Mark Peters contributed to this report

If we alter the levels, it could be harmful.

I am sure we alter stuff, we are so destructive to our environment.

Yep,
If we all it ignore science and facts then we will all come to the same conclusion as the Republican Party.
We really don't need the scientist at all.
We can just ask the Republicans.
LMAO

Yeah...I have "altered" the levels a few times. It called a "greenhouse". That's where the name is from. I have dealt my first 17 years of my life working in greenhouses, thank you very much.




The plants grew larger.

This world is truly doomed really, thanks to dumb people believe everything they tell them to what to believe, even if it contradicts science and common sense.

If you declare the "greenhouse gases" a danger...then what's next? Do you know they can now tax you on anything now? Even breathing air?

EPA Declares Greenhouse Gases a Danger

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703558004574582190625776518.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Looks like the world belong to the lunatics and undereducated people.


Greenhouse gases:
In order, Earth's most abundant greenhouse gases are:

* water vapor
* carbon dioxide
* methane
* nitrous oxide
* ozone
* CFCs


Real Climate ranks by their contribution to the greenhouse effect:
* water vapor, which contributes 36–70%
* carbon dioxide, which contributes 9–26%
* methane, which contributes 4–9%
* ozone, which contributes 3–7%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect

these are essential elements of life on Earth
And they are bad for health?

Yep,
If we all it ignore science and facts then we will all come to the same conclusion as the Republican Party.
We really don't need the scientist at all.
We can just ask the Republicans.
LMAO

anything that is out of balance can be unhealthy. If your bodys water levels go off balance too quickly you can die, if certain cells which normally protect us from disease are present too abundantly we could die,,etc,,

too much or too much of an inbalance of anything can be detrimental

Humans are damaging the enviroment of this planet,but of course the reptilians do not want that,so they are taking steps to save the enviroment in advance of their future plans for full scale colonization.

As I have previously shown, speculative derivatives (especially credit default swaps or "CDS") are a primary cause of the economic crisis. They were largely responsible for bringing down Bear Stearns, AIG (and see this), WaMu and other mammoth corporations.

According to top experts, risky derivatives were not only largely responsible for bringing down the American (and world) economy, but they still pose a substantial systemic risk:

* A Nobel prize-winning economist (George Akerlof) predicted in 1993 that CDS would cause the next meltdown

* Warren Buffett called them “weapons of mass destruction” in 2003

* Warren Buffett’s sidekick Charles T. Munger, has called the CDS prohibition the best solution, and said “it isn’t as though the economic world didn’t function quite well without it, and it isn’t as though what has happened has been so wonderfully desirable that we should logically want more of it”

* Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan - after being one of their biggest cheerleaders - now says CDS are dangerous

* Former SEC chairman Christopher Cox said "The virtually unregulated over-the-counter market in credit-default swaps has played a significant role in the credit crisis''

* Newsweek called CDS "The Monster that Ate Wall Street"

* President Obama said in a June 17 speech on his plans for finance industry regulatory reform that credit swaps and other derivatives “have threatened the entire financial system”

* George Soros says the market is still unsafe, and that credit- default swaps are “toxic” and “a very dangerous derivative” because it’s easier and potentially more profitable for investors to bet against companies using them than through so-called short sales.

* U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters introduced a bill in July that tried to ban credit-default swaps because she said they permitted speculation responsible for bringing the financial system to its knees.

* Nobel prize-winning economist Myron Scholes - who developed much of the pricing structure used in CDS - said that over-the-counter CDS are so dangerous that they should be “blown up or burned”, and we should start fresh

* A leading credit default swap expert (Satyajit Das) says that the new credit default swap regulations not only won't help stabilize the economy, they might actually help to destabilize it.

* Senator Cantwell says that the new derivatives legislation is weaker than current regulation

Round Two: Carbon Derivatives

Now, Bloomberg notes that the carbon trading scheme will be largely centered around derivatives:

The banks are preparing to do with carbon what they’ve done before: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. They’re also ready to sell carbon-related financial products to outside investors.

[Blythe] Masters says banks must be allowed to lead the way if a mandatory carbon-trading system is going to help save the planet at the lowest possible cost. And derivatives related to carbon must be part of the mix, she says. Derivatives are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity -- in this case, CO2 and other greenhouse gases...

Who is Blythe Masters?

She is the JP Morgan employee who invented credit default swaps, and is now heading JPM's carbon trading efforts. As Bloomberg notes (this and all remaining quotes are from the above-linked Bloomberg article):

Masters, 40, oversees the New York bank’s environmental businesses as the firm’s global head of commodities...

As a young London banker in the early 1990s, Masters was part of JPMorgan’s team developing ideas for transferring risk to third parties. She went on to manage credit risk for JPMorgan’s investment bank.
Among the credit derivatives that grew from the bank’s early efforts was the credit-default swap.

Some in congress are fighting against carbon derivatives:

“People are going to be cutting up carbon futures, and we’ll be in trouble,” says Maria Cantwell, a Democratic senator from Washington state. “You can’t stay ahead of the next tool they’re going to create.”

Cantwell, 51, proposed in November that U.S. state governments be given the right to ban unregulated financial products. “The derivatives market has done so much damage to our economy and is nothing more than a very-high-stakes casino -- except that casinos have to abide by regulations,” she wrote in a press release...

However, Congress may cave in to industry pressure to let carbon derivatives trade over-the-counter:

The House cap-and-trade bill bans OTC derivatives, requiring that all carbon trading be done on exchanges...The bankers say such a ban would be a mistake...The banks and companies may get their way on carbon derivatives in separate legislation now being worked out in Congress...

Financial experts are also opposed to cap and trade:

Even George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund operator, says money managers would find ways to manipulate cap-and-trade markets. “The system can be gamed,” Soros, 79, remarked at a London School of Economics seminar in July. “That’s why financial types like me like it -- because there are financial opportunities”...

Hedge fund manager Michael Masters, founder of Masters Capital Management LLC, based in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands [and unrelated to Blythe Masters] says speculators will end up controlling U.S. carbon prices, and their participation could trigger the same type of boom-and-bust cycles that have buffeted other commodities...

The hedge fund manager says that banks will attempt to inflate the carbon market by recruiting investors from hedge funds and pension funds.

“Wall Street is going to sell it as an investment product to people that have nothing to do with carbon,” he says. “Then suddenly investment managers are dominating the asset class, and nothing is related to actual supply and demand. We have seen this movie before.”

Indeed, as I have previously pointed out, many environmentalists are opposed to cap and trade as well. For example:

Michelle Chan, a senior policy analyst in San Francisco for Friends of the Earth, isn’t convinced.

“Should we really create a new $2 trillion market when we haven’t yet finished the job of revamping and testing new financial regulation?” she asks. Chan says that, given their recent history, the banks’ ability to turn climate change into a new commodities market should be curbed...

“What we have just been woken up to in the credit crisis -- to a jarring and shocking degree -- is what happens in the real world,” she says...

Friends of the Earth’s Chan is working hard to prevent the banks from adding carbon to their repertoire. She titled a March FOE report “Subprime Carbon?” In testimony on Capitol Hill, she warned, “Wall Street won’t just be brokering in plain carbon derivatives -- they’ll get creative.”

How the Movie Ends

Yes, they'll get "creative", and we have seen this movie before ...an inadequately-regulated carbon derivatives boom will destabilize the economy and lead to another crash.

I have previously pointed out that CDS sellers - like the big sellers of other financial products - know that the government will bail them out if CDS crash again. So they have strong incentives to sell them and to recreate huge levels of leverage. Indeed, the same dynamic that led to the S&L crisis also led to last year's CDS crisis, and will lead to the next crisis as well. So - while CDS might be a particularly dangerous type of "weapon of mass destruction" (in Warren Buffet's words), the new carbon derivatives may very well become the new form of looting on the public's dime. If the government allows massive carbon derivatives trading with as little oversight as over the CDS market, taxpayers will end up spending many trillions bailing out the giant banks and propping up the economy when the carbon market bubble bursts.

Does anyone else see it as rather " convenient " that the EPA, NOW, decides to say that CO2 is a " dangerous " gas.

Right when the Obama administration is trying to get Cap and Tax legislation passed.

How much ya wanna bet the administration leaned on the EPA a bit letting the EPA know what it " needed " them to say?

On a related Global Warming note.....

The " scientists " that so many of the Global Warming hacks want to believe soooo badly have shown themselves to be utterly and completely clueless.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/6760103/Starving-polar-bears-turn-to-cannibalism.html

Do these people just speak for the sake of speaking???

For those of you too lazy to read the article, what it basically says is that Polar Bears, because of Global Warming, have starting eating each other for food.

The picture that accompanies the article is of what appears to be a polar bear eating a polar bear cub.

Now...anyone who has ANY clue about polar bears ( and if they are going to keep using them as an example for what Global Warming is going to cause ) then they would KNOW that Polar Bear males are well known for eating cubs. They do that to make the mother of the cubs go back into heat so that the male can breed.

Just one more example of why the " scientists " are a completely unreliable source for information as far as Global Warming goes.