Justices’ First Brush With Global Warming

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A Supreme Court argument Wednesday on the Bush administration’s refusal to regulate carbon dioxide in automobile emissions offered three intertwined plot lines to the audience that had come to watch the court’s first encounter with the issue of global climate change.

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Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., along with Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr., expressed strong doubts that the plaintiffs, represented by Assistant Attorney General James R. Milkey of Massachusetts, could meet those interrelated conditions by showing that global climate change presented a sufficiently tangible and imminent danger that could be adequately addressed by regulating emissions from new cars and trucks.

“You have to show the harm is imminent,” Justice Scalia instructed Mr. Milkey, asking, “I mean, when is the cataclysm?”

Mr. Milkey replied, “It’s not so much a cataclysm as ongoing harm,” arguing that Massachusetts, New York, and other coastal states faced losing “sovereign territory” to rising sea levels. “So the harm is already occurring,” he said. “It is ongoing, and it will happen well into the future.”

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On the other side, Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter appeared strongly inclined to find that the plaintiffs had met the standing test.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/washington/30scotus.html?hp&ex=1164862800&en=73e216825fe778eb&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[fairfaxvadem]

1. Justice Scalia. It figures.

If it doesn't hit him on the ass or head, it isn't "immediate."

I'm sure what he wants to say is: "The Lord will provide. Get your science out of my courtroom."

Sorry to be so crass, but he really pisses me off. He's a monarchist, not a republican. Much better suited to the Bourbon court than our fair democracy.

[jpak]

2. Fat Tony is clueless

He stated that anthropogenic CO2 is only 6% of the global CO2 flux to the atmosphere - and, because of that, any CO2 regulations would have little impact.

This is ignorant RW nonsense.

Each year respiration releases 120 Pg of C into the atmosphere...and each year photosynthesis removes 120 Pg of C from the atmosphere.

The net flux of CO2 from the biosphere is very close to zero.

Volcanoes release ~0.1 Pg of C to the atmosphere each year...and each year burial of carbon in marine sediments isolates ~0.1 Pg of C from the atmosphere.

The net flux of CO2 between the Earth's crust and atmosphere is very close to zero.

CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere because humans oxidize ~7 pG of carbon each year.

Roughly half of this remains in atmosphere.

The rest retained in the terrestrial environment or dissolved in the ocean.

Fat Tony needs some schoolin'...

[Javaman]

3. Ahh, now I get asshole scalia's logic...

Unless it's like a meteor about to slam into his fancy ass gas guzzling car, he doesn't want to hear about it.

The tact they should have said in this case, should have gone along something like this, "Justice Scalia, you have grand children right? There is a fantastic chance that your children will out live them. That is what we are facing".

He's a pig.