RE: American Bashing!

Well, its easy to judge what you don’t understand!

Ah, Scooter… please be a bit more careful! Comments like that are just BOUND to backfire on US foreign politics… Don’t be so inviting!

RE: Morocco invades Spain

I have to say that i found Ceuta one of the weirdest places i’ve ever been, outweirding other enclaves like Gib or Kaliningrad.

The place was just so… odd! When we got off the boat, some guy gave us the cliche “Welcome to Africa”-greeting while EU flags were waving above our heads… Right. The houses, shops and cars are filled with Spaniards being as Spanish as a Spaniard can be, but the amount of Maghrebian beggars, soldiers of the Spanish Foreign Legion (now those guys are scary… in the museum they still celebrate their good old generalissimo Franco) and hugely expensive cars with guys inside looking even better than the worst former-Soviet biznizmeny. The latter could be local politicians as well, (when i was there the Gil y Gil (sp?) clan just took over municipality there) but people and/or pot smugglers will probably consider Ceuta (or Melilla) paradise.

And then there’s the border. Three huge fences, about six metres high with razorwire rolls on top and in between, and continuous jeeps driving along. Very impressive – until you get to the border crossing. While there was hardly any check for me and my (then) girlfriend (we walker back and forth once or twice because we forgot something), anyone looking Maghrebian was thoroughly checked. At the Moroccan side, a huge pile of worn-out Mercedes taxis are waiting for the people entering Morocco. I don’t know what the everyday usage of this bordercrossing is, but it didn’t seem all to crowded. If at all – Morocco/Spain and vice versa is definately a lot easier via Tanger, and not through the enclaves.

Weird place. Loved it!

RE: Natural gas…

I get your point, thanks for clarification. This doesn’t matter much though – a burning forest is part of a short carbon cycle, those trees have during their lives taken CO2 from the atmosphere and grew because of that. Of course, this forest fire releases this CO2 again which of course adds to the carbondioxide in the atmosphere.

But burning fossile fuels produces CO2 which hasn’t been in the atmosphere for millions of years. This makes burning fossile fuels far more destabilising than a forest fire, no matter how big the impact of a massive forest fire is in the short run. The effect of CO2 released by burning massive amounts of fossile fuels over a long time (humanity has been doing that on an industrial scale for some two centuries now) is far more devastating to the atmospherical balance than a forest fire is.

This is also the reason why i think measures should be taken – greenhouse effects will be known for sure only when a new balance in the atmosphere has been settled with (most likely) a higher temperature. Taking action then is too late.

Damn, i really start to sound like a treehugging hippie. I guess i have to go outside now, start my car and come back leaving it running }> Oh, and i’ll be crushing some wild flowers later on 😀

RE: Natural gas…

DJ, i have to disagree here. Forest fires (just like volcano eruptions) are natural occurances. Yes, they pollute, but this fits in the natural emission balance which was created over the last million years or so.

Human emissions might be less pullutive when it comes to burning residu (thanks to a cleaner burn rate), it is continuous and not a single burst of emission which can be buffered. Also, CO2 is not toxical (like the bulk of the stuff which escapes after a dirty forest fire), it is a greenhouse gas.

Also, i’d like to know the amount of biomass burnt in the forest fires in Arizona, New Mexico and California over the last month. I doubt it’s as much as either one of those states have burnt any fuels (oil, coal, wood, LNG) over the last 7 years. I don’t think the forest fires are all that significant if you look at those rates, especially when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions.

RE: Natural gas…

>The question is why 1990? Why not 1980?

It’s more a matter of having a starting point than anything else. 1980 would be an easy pick for Europe as well since our plants were highly pollitive back then (it was the time of the acid rain here in Western Europe, sometimes as bad as pH>5) but we did major restructuring in the 1980s. The US did not (environmental politics during the Reagan years would make a nice comedy :D) during the 1980s, and couldn’t during the first half of the 1990s.

Going back even further would of course make an unrealistic starting point – if we’d take the 1830s for example only Britain and Belgium should be considered the pollutants of this planet :).

>I agree
>we need to increase the efficiencies of our powerplants, but
>this European advertisement of their powerplants being more
>efficient is only in the face of comparing to Eastern states
>where they still use coal.

Those Eastern European plants are now more efficient than many American plants, at high costs. Brown coal (is that the correct term? It’s the soft coal found in day-mining, usually highly contaminated with sulphur and other nasty stuff) is used at only a fraction of what it was a decade ago in the East.

>Many plants in the US are truly
>state of the art also.

I have little doubt about that.

>California has the toughest emission
>laws on this planet and the law dictates any corporations
>with a vehicle fleet must have a huge percentage of low
>emission vehicles (gas/hybrids) and a growing percentage of
>non emission (electric) vehicles.

What i never understood is that while California has indeed the toughest emission laws in the world, AFAIK this goes only for the contents of the emission and NOT on the efficiency of the engine (i don’t know how this is on a corporate level though). My rusty old Peugot probably won’t make it through those Californian emission tests, but i doubt it’s as polluting as an one-mile-per-gallon SUV.

>The entire University of
>California system uses majority gas fuel cars, trucks, and
>buses.

It’s not that unique. The entire city of Tilburg’s (population some 200.000) public transport park (only buses) use LNG as fuel, and there are some other cities as well

>I would like one day the US powerplants to be 100%
>super efficient, but i think the requirements set by Kyoto
>is too fast paced.

But is that a reason to denounce the whole treaty? At least it’s a legal stick to make sure that efficiency is worked on, no matter how politically populair the environment is at any given time.

>It would only require the Europeans to
>replace a few powerplants while it almost means an entire
>overhaul of 50% of this country’s power system in a decade
>or so.

Agree, that’s a tough nut. But as i said above, it’s for a large part because your powerplants have been neglected for quite some time.

>And then there’s the French, what do they have to
>loose? They use nuclear power. But, then they’ll have to
>deal with the anti-Nuclear fan clubs.

It’s not the French who are inconsistent here, it’s far worse with the Dutch, Belgians and other countries which don’t want to use nuclear power themselves, yet buy large quantities of French nuclear power… No matter anyone’s opinion on the Kyoto treaty, nuclear energy hasn’t got anything to do with it as it is not atmospherically polluting. So yes, one could score lots of points in the Kyoto frame by building crappy nuke plants 😛 There are a lot of things in the treaty which can be picked upon, as there are in every large international treaty. But by signing it and ratifying it, a country shows at least good intentions.

>What if in the Kyoto
>we also say nuclear waste reduction?

As said above, it’s an atmospherical environment treaty with especially the ozone layer in mind.

>The point is, as i pointed out
>earlier, we are not sure and we shouldn’t politicize this (=the >hole in the ozone layer i presume – Arthur)
>which is what Kyoto is all about.

My opinion is, and a lot of people do here in Europe, is that the US is politicizing the treaty. Not internationally to the rest of the world, but internally in the US where the pro-industrial Republican administration has cancelled a treaty signed by the tree-hugging Democrats.
The hole in the ozone-layer theory is generally accepted here in Europe but there is a lot of doubt in the US. That’s fine, the science behind it is not conclusive. But the amount of scepticism the whole ozone-layer thing recieves in the US is of such a level, that it seems the point where the US is willing to take it into consideration is when it’s too late.

>If you are so sure, why
>are even leading scientific proponents also concedes that a
>slight change in the modeling you got global cooling. We
>can be prudent about it and try to look into more details of
>it and that’s exactly what we’re doing. If you ask me i
>think deforestation have a HUGE thing to do with it. Why
>don’t you give us some credit for actually increasing our
>Forests more than anybody else? It’s obviously a sum of all
>things, but i really think decrease in CO2 sinks (forrests)
>is a huge deal.

It is, and forest protection should be a bigger international concern than it is now. But the point is that deforestation is for a large part an uncontrolled and illegal matter, and lies far beyond the direct control of policy makers. Unless you want to put a forest-policeman on every acre of tropical rainforest making sure it isn’t slashed down, or provide other direct means of forest protection i’m not so sure what can be done about it.

The C02 problem has plenty of sides. And while i agree with you that more than just the emission should be tackled with, i think those emissions are one of the easier parts to tackle.

RE: Euro nations

Vortex, you’re correct in stating that the dollar has devaluated in front of the Euro for a great deal because of US corporate screw-ups/cover-ups. But with the euro now being a ‘real’ currency, i’m not so sure if the dollar will be able to regain ground, and certainly not within a matter of months. The blow the US economy has gotten from it’s rotten components is considered really serious here – and with the euro now in the position to prove itself, this might lead to an interesting competition between the two.

Of course this depends for a large part on how well corporate America is able to regain some credibility. But i don’t think it (nor the rest of the global economy) can afford one more scandal of Enron or Worldcom magnitude without major consequences. And this would have far worse results than a weakened dollar (which is destabilising enough).

RE: Natural gas…

Yeah, we’ve signed it just like the US, the difference is we ratified it as well.

Most of the text was written by our then-minister of environmental issues. That’s not as bad as you think by the way: he rewrote the final text to such an extent that the US could accept it. Until the Bush administration came along, that is.

RE: American Bashing!

>As a American I am really getting tried of all of the
>American Bashing going around!

I doubt anyone here giving negative comments on the US thinks it’s a personal thing. I can assure you that everything i have ever said that was in defiance of what comes from the Whitehouse wasn’t ment to piss you or any other American off, but to use my freedom of speech to give my opinion.

>It seems like regardless what
>the U.S. does everyone criticizes its actions?

The higher you climb, the deeper you fall. It isn’t all that strange that the US is getting all the flak from Euroliberals, die-hard communists or socially challenged islamists. The US is the country which is the most prominent player on the world stage.

>Well, you
>know its easy to be a spectator at a game than it is to be a
>player on the field.

As if you are the only ones. Canada, Britain and even a small country like the Netherlands participate in more UN-missions than the USA. And screw up from time to time, after which critic follows. So why can’t the USA be looked upon critically?

>As for our critics all I can say is get
>in the game or stop yelling from the stands.

Stop berserking in the field and look who else is playing.

>Our Fathers and
>Grandfathers fought and died fighting in two World Wars.
>We’ve defeated Nazi’s, Tojo’s, and Communist all in the last
>half century!

Apart from the self-defeating Communists i am very, very thankful for the US in saving our ungrateful European asses. But you can’t expect to bathe in former glory forever. Or should i expect respect and humility from the US because the Netherlands were the first country which acknowledged the USA? No, because we are living in 2002. My comments on the US administration is on the current administration, not on the one from 60 years ago.

>Then afterwards we helped rebuild those very
>same countries with compassion and understanding. (i.e.
>Germany, Japan, Itay, etc.)

Again, i don’t think anyone isn’t grateful for that.

>Now be lectured from people that
>owe many of their freedoms to our forefathers is offensive
>to say the least!

I can understand you take it as offensive, but it’s rather naieve to think that this gives the current American government an excuse to do what it wants TODAY. Especially since America still has the image of being a helpful nation (by no means altruistic, but helpful), it is rather striking for outside observers to see that same US of A currently doing all it can to antagonise the rest of the world.

>We have a very old saying in America
>”Freedom isn’t Free”

True. That’s why i am debating here, to stop you from denying me my opinion and my right to express it.

>…….and I mite add “Becareful what
>you wish for you mite get it”

This saying works both ways. Osama could use this just as well, and justified from his distasteful point of view.

>……As our President recently
>said “which side our you on”

Unlike your President, i have the mental ability to see more than black and white, good and evil, left and right. Although i think my opinion on terrorism is a sane level of repulsion, my opinion on the American way of fighting it isn’t much better. Does that make me equal to some fanatic idiot crashing an airliner into a highrise building? To your president maybe, but i trust you don’t want to intern me in Gitmo and deny me the rights given to me even by your own country (in the Geneva Convention, the Helsinki Treaty, and your own laws).

> In the last half century it was
>Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini! Now its Saddam, Communism, and
>Terrorist! Which, side are you on?

I am on my side.