Tzor wrote:WHAT PART DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND? SULFUR WAS NEVER ESTIMATED. IT WAS MEASURED. PERIOD. END OF DISCUSSION.
It was sampled and estimated. No one actually counted all the sulfur molecules that came out of individual power plants.
Your ravings don't make any sense here. Actually Carbon measurements would be way more accurate, since burning carbon is "the point" instead of "a contaminant" when you're burning fossil fuels.
I'm under the impression that tzor's point is that there was a module at the plant measuring output daily and sending that information to the EPA - they were indeed counting sulfur molecules. At least, they were sampling but only at the one plant.
An effective Cap-and-Trade for carbon would need similar reporting, yes? I don't see the problem with that, or why tzor thinks that's a problem.
Here is my point, that monitoring was used to determine the output for that plant. That determinating was used to determine thier fines etc. So if Fred the operations manager managed to run the plant really well that week, the emissions were lower and so were the fees for his company.
(In the case of Sulfur the only ones fined were the ones monitored.)
In the case of carbon, no one is even remotely measuring my output. If I drive my Prius so effieiently as to optimize CO2 (oh wait, there is a joke here ... I'll get to that later) it doesn't matter. There is no incentive at all to improve performance at the individual source level, because we have already been fined by some random official in government.
(And that joke is that you can "reduce" CO2 emissions, by having a BAD device, not a good one. Incomplete burning results in CO, otherwise known as SMOG. Yes, let's save the planet and KILL everyone in the cities because of the long term health impacts of smog in urban environments. Way to go Al Gore, who livest as far away from urban centers as possible.)
This is aside from the general point that acid rain produced a measurable result that could be directly related to acidity in rivers and lakes and directly shown to KILL FISH. CO2, on the other hand is bullshit science that some computer modiler (who still can't predict shit with the model that can be verified) originally adopted by the Iron Lady (in order to promote nuclear power in the UK) and adopted by the liberal progressive movement because it the greatest tax on the earth since the imposition of the "Soul" tax in the middle ages where the people were taxed just because they had souls.
