Forum Post: Proposed list of OWS Demands

Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. Unionize ALL workers immediately. Raise the minimum wage immediately to $18/hr. Create a maximum wage of $90/hr to eliminate inequality. I make $120/hour, can’t afford child support, can’t afford a house, and you want to cut it down? Institute a 6 hour workday, and 6 weeks of paid vacation. So my salaries cut and my hours are cut? You just took away 43% of my earnings! Institute a moratorium on all foreclosures and layoffs immediately. Repeal racist and xenophobic English-only laws. America speaks English? Open the borders to all immigrants, legal or illegal. Offer immediate, unconditional amnesty, to all undocumented residents of the US. What! Are you kidding me? Do they get social security too? Create a single-payer, universal health care system. Paid for by the rich, which I will soon not be. Pass stricter campaign finance reform laws. Ban all private donations. All campaigns will receive equal funding, provided by the taxpayers. This is so that only unions like teacher union funds, can donate large sums of money to their agenda without interference. Institute a negative income tax, and tax the very rich at rates up to 90%. 2012, the year of the great migration for the rich, they buy out Greece and move there. Pass far stricter environmental protection and animal rights laws, so that no business can build anything without outrageous fees. Allow workers to elect their supervisors. Lower the retirement age to 55. Increase Social Security benefits. Paid for by whom? The rich all moved to Greece? Create a 5% annual wealth tax for the very rich. Ban the private ownership of land. WHAT! Make homeschooling illegal. Religious fanatics use it to feed their children propaganda. WHAT! Reduce the age of majority to 16. Abolish the death penalty and life in prison. We call for the immediate release of all death row inmates from death row and transferred to regular prisons. Release all political prisoners immediately. Immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. Abolish the debt limit. Ban private gun ownership. Strengthen the separation of church and state. Immediate debt forgiveness for all. End the 'War on Drugs'. Breakdown: What Does Occupy Wall Street Want? Sunday, October 23, 2011 Update by Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka There's a bunch of screaming, angry, incoherent weird people with signs gathering in large crowds across the country, and for once it's not the Tea Party. So what do the Occupy Wall Street protesters want? We took an informal poll and discovered groups of people with the following ideals and beliefs: • 16,283: The government needs to impose salary caps for all businesses. If an individual ends up getting paid "too much" money, the government should fire and replace them with energy-efficient scooters. Recyclable energy-efficient scooters. From Darfur. • 16,008: Free health care for every American and also non-Americans. This program should be able to cure every disease and also make it impossible to ever die. Also every year on your birthday the government should send you a check for $1,000 that says "GREAT JOB!!! XOXOXO UNCLE SAM" • 15,998: "Being poor" should be a professional occupation subsidized by the rich, a job which can pay up to $56,000 annually. Tenure should be provided to individuals who do the best job being poor. This will ensure they do not end up living a life of poverty. • 15,002: There are currently too many people who do not belong to unions. This can be fixed by creating a Global Union of Human Beings, which any person automatically joins upon being born. Union benefits include two free bumper stickers and the promise to fight for any human being who has their job replaced by a non-human being (exempting recyclable energy-efficient scooters from Darfur). • 15,001: Banks should not be permitted to make money; they should only be allowed to lose money. But not our money... somebody else's money (emphasis on the key part of the statement). • 14,781: Something seriously needs to be done about this whole global warming thing. We don't really have a concrete plan on how to solve it, but we'll just come up with shit and will judge its success on how many people it annoys. Maybe make it illegal to be warm or something. • 13,129: There needs to be more jobs. There also needs to be less pollution. Replace pollution with jobs. • 13,121: Remember that George W. Bush guy? He was a terrible president. We just wanted to remind anybody in case they forgot. • 13,121: Also Dick Cheney. • 12,677: Instead of shooting guys in the Middle East, our soldiers should be having gay sex with them. • 12,003: Immigration laws must be reformed. Simply touching American soil should instantly make you an automatic American citizen. Mailing a foreigner a package of dirt from Ohio will immediately transform them into an American upon signing for the delivery. Also if you turn on the television and see an American on it, you become a citizen as well, regardless of where you are located. • 11,873: Instead of forcing citizens to do it, Wall Street should pay to occupy itself. • 11,295: The teachers union needs more rights and power. Instead of basing performance on student test scores, teachers will be rewarded based on the number of times they are able to correctly spell their own name. • 10,911: More jobs for poor people, less jobs for rich people. Middle class people will keep the same amount of jobs they currently have, but they should be given coupons to trade their job in for another job of equal or lesser value (does not expire). • 10,673: The government is far too corrupt and bloated. A new, bonus government should be created, with the explicit purpose of monitoring the other government. The bonus government should employ more public employees and have a larger budget than the original government, because that would obviously make it more effective. • 10,271: CCP Games is ruining EVE Online's fragile economy and must be stopped at all costs. • 9,972: It is not fair that a lot of money goes to rich people while only a little bit of money goes to poor people. For the sake of equality, all the money should instead go to the government. • 8,883: Investment bankers are ruining the global economy. The fundamental principles of banking and investing are corrupt. To prevent another global meltdown, all numbers should be considered subjective. At any moment in time, the number 9 could suddenly become the number 46, and vice versa. Any number greater than 2,000,000 should be illegal. • 8,102: Bring back "Arrested Development." Oh wait, they did bring it back. Well in that case, this is a preemptive protest for when it is inevitably canceled once more. • 7,839: Guns are the leading cause of all gun-related murders, so guns should be illegal. Knives are the second highest leading cause of all gun-related murders, so they should also be illegal. Hell, let's just make murder illegal. That should solve the problem. • 7,127: Atheism should be taught in all schools to counteract the Christians in our culture, who are all intolerant racists possessing extremely narrow, sweeping, judgmental worldviews. • 6,231: A liberal scientific thinktank has conclusively proven the validity of the equation "TEA PARTY = NAZIS." This fact must be revealed and shared with the general public through the use of red markers on cardboard signs. • 6,008: Automobile manufacturers should be required to install car seats that allow the driver to have an abortion while operating their vehicle. The dead baby should then be processed and used as biofuel. • 5,998: The government should encourage eating anybody who earns over $250,000 a year. • 4,289: There should be more support for gay marriage. Anybody should be able to have a gay marriage, regardless of sexual orientation or lack of partner. Any baby born should automatically be gay married to another baby by default, unless the baby signs a document stating otherwise. • 3,165: The government should approve more research money to produce vegan tapwater. • 2,971: Government should subsidize iPhones for all Americans (ie, "only poor Americans"). • 2,506: Support for impractical, unsustainable, expensive, inefficient renewable energy sources that inconvenience everyone involved and cause more problems than they solve. Maybe a windmill powered by sand that is delivered to homes via horseback. • 2,288: Close Guantanamo Bay. Open more Trader Joe's. • 1,963: The government should move Wall Street to somewhere more comfortable, like an open field or a beach maybe. That would really help us all occupy it more efficiently. Make it closer to our apartments too. • 1,584: Free college education offering degrees available through the internet. Possible majors include Advanced Blogging, Politics Arguing, and Minecraft Playing. • 963: White people shouldn't be allowed to vote for Herman Cain because the only reason they'd do this is to trick people into thinking they aren't racist, when they actually are. The only person who should be able to vote for Cain is himself. • 502: Make it possible to Congressionally elect anime characters. • 384: Something (bad) is happening to the ocean and somebody should try to stop it (soon). • 201: Illegalize money. • 153: Replace Fox News with a channel that reports on the furry community 24/7. Continue to call it "Fox News." • 97: Rebuild the Twin Towers and let Muslims fly more planes into it so they can get their aggression out. Repeat process until they see how compassionate we are and thereby end their hostilities against us. • 43: There should be one day every month where the cops are put in jails and the prisoners get to be police officers, because then those fascist pigs will know what it feels like to be on the other side. We can call it something fun like "The Great Switcharoo Day." • 19: End the "skateboarding is in fact a crime" act. • 17: No particular agenda; just showed up to wear stupid Guy Fawkes masks and do retarded shit to be ashamed of for the rest of all eternity. • 1: Sane and rational person who thoroughly understands the fundamental problems in America. So who lost trillions in extremely complicated finacial gambles? The Wall St banks. Who convinced the governments they had to be bailed out with public funds to avoid the laws of capitalism? The Wall St banks. Who is still paying $100's of billions in bonuses each year out of those public funds? The Wall St banks. Who is refusing to lend to SMEs to stimulate a faltering economy? [SME == small to medium enterprise] The Wall St banks. Is it getting clearer as to why they are protesting at Wall St? Funny how giving yourself and your cronies each a billion dollar bonus, out of public funds, during a depression is OK with you, but wearing a black shirt is makes you an extremist. How do you feel about the US ICE department announcing it was siezing internet sites from Disney studios? (given that these sites were taken without due process, oversight or proper juristriction resulting in 10,000s of errors?) Well, one of the problems is that the "Occupy Wall Street" folks themselves don't really know what they want. They are a mixture of all different sorts of folks. Some are moderates who want more regulation of Wall Street, others are die-hard communists who have come out of hiding since the Collapse of the Soviet Union and think that they can spark a revolution again. They are a diverse group with no real central message - think of them as the Left-Wing equivalent of the Tea Party. The Tea Party was a broad right-wing group who broadly opposed Obama, but didn't have a coherent message. Some wanted all immigrants removed, others wanted less environmental regulation and still others just wanted lower taxes. Some were racist, others weren't. The same thing is occurring with this Wall Street Occupation group - some are there protesting the Bailout that occurred in 07 and 09, others are there to protest the concept of globalization, still others are there because they STILL think Marxist ideology should rule the world. I'd wager that if you went down to the Occupy Wall Street protests and asked 20 people what the protests were about, you'd get 20 different answers. And that's fine. That's what most protests are like. You will never find one group that speaks for everyone. The Occupy Wall Street movement is made up of a bunch of interest groups, that, as a whole, I'd wager represent some of the interests of about.... oh, say 30% of the United States. That's a significant number. I'm not saying 30% of Americans agree with everything the Occupy Wall Street people want, but that at least some interests coincide. And probably at least 50% of Americans have some sympathy to the protesters. Broadly, what most of the group would agree on is that Business has an unnecessary and dangerous amount of influence in Washington. Money talks and politicians listen. Most of them, at a minimum, want donations by corporations to at least be limited to a certain amount. I don't have a problem with that - it's a well known fact that money corrupts politics. It happened to the Romans, and it's happening now. Now, as I've said, I don't agree with everything these Occupy Wall Street folks want. I'm certain that a fair number of them are hard-line communists/anarchists or ultra-green Luddite types who want to end Globalization. I'm all for regulating (even toughly regulating) capitalism, but I'm not prepared to scrap capitalism, especially when the alternative some of these folks are proposing seems to be a whole lot worse than capitalism (Soviet Union, anyone? Maoist China, anyone? Cuba, anyone? Communist Vietnam, anyone? Cambodia, anyone? Virtually EVERY communist/hard-socialist state, anyone?) So why do I support them, even though I'm pretty sure I don't want them to get their way? Because Democracies are about Push-and-Pull. No group, NO GROUP on the left or the right represent the interests, values or ideas of 100%, or hell, even 80% of the American people. This is a mistake many young people make - the idea that "their" group speaks for "The People". Get real - you don't. You never have. NO ONE has EVER spoken for ALL the people. At best, you speak for 60% of the people, but realistically, it's less than that. There's a reason the US keeps shifting between Republican and Democratic Administrations - and it's because America is a very diverse place with many different sorts who think and believe in different things. But through it all, the competing voices of Americans have usually led to a centrist, moderate way of doing things (I know, those of you on the hard-left or the hard-right will scoff at the notion that the US has been centrist. But the fact that BOTH hard-line right-wingers and left-wingers hate the modern US is an indication that the US is doing SOMETHING right to piss off the crazies). While I might have very little in common with the far right or the far left, their voices push and pull the debate in such a way that things usually end up in the centre, which is just where I like it. So I'm sympathetic to the Wall Street Occupiers. It doesn't matter if I think many of their ideas and goals are fuzzy-wuzzy, unrealistic, typical college-youth nonsense (what with their Che Guevera T-Shirts and whatnot) - they serve as a counter balance against another group I hate EVEN MORE - the "no-minimum wage", "Let-the-poor-die", "evolution-is-a-lie" hard-line conservatives who would probably drag us back to the 1800s if they could. The type would would kick an orphan boy down a cliff if it was profitable to do so. While I generally find the far-Left folks a bit crazy, they have heart. But when I talk to the Far-right folks, it's like I'm conversing with a logical entity, but one that is completely devoid of morality and human feelings. I don't like either group. But they usually balance and cancel each other out. Thes OWS protesters won't get their way. Nor should they. But they are there to remind folks in Washington that there is more to America than Goldman and Exxon. That is a very important lesson for Washington to learn. And Wallstreet for that matter. You push the poor down for too long, they'll explode and do something silly. That's human nature. Look at Venezuela - The rich oppressed the poor for so long that the eventually revolted and put in place a lunatic like Chavez, who has destroyed the economy. A similar thing can happen in the US. You kick the poor around for too long, they'll get mad. And mad people aren't rational. Concessions and compromises are necessary to keep things stable, and somewhere along the way, the financiers and Politicians forgot that fact. This Occupy Wall Street group should remind them that there ARE TWO AMERICAS and that you have to BALANCE the interests between conservatives and liberals, or things will get nasty. Very nasty. Blood-in-the-streets nasty. And no one wants that. The rich in Venezuela are kicking themselves. Had they moderated, had they granted more concessions to the poor, they wouldn't be stuck with Hugo Chavez. OWS is a reminder that you have to pay attention to more than one group of people. While OWS might not speak for all Americans, or even most Americans, they are there and they are loud and I think you'll find more than a few people have some sympathy for them and their goals. America is not a happy place right now. It's not nearly as bad as Egypt or Greece, but tensions are rising. You might not agree with what the poor want, but if there are a lot of them, and if they are angry, I don't think your Platinum Visa Card is going to stop them caving in your head with a pipe.

Wave energy

What is wave energy? Wave energy is an irregular and oscillating low-frequency energy source that can be converted to a 60-Hertz frequency and can then be added to the electric utility grid. The energy in waves comes from the movement of the ocean and the changing heights and speed of the swells. Kinetic energy, the energy of motion, in waves is tremendous. An average 4-foot, 10-second wave striking a coast puts out more than 35,000 horsepower per mile of coast. Waves get their energy from the wind. Wind comes from solar energy. Waves gather, store, and transmit this energy thousands of miles with little loss. As long as the sun shines, wave energy will never be depleted. It varies in intensity, but it is available twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. Ocean wave energy technologies rely on the up-and-down motion of waves to generate electricity. The first wave-power patent was for a 1799 proposal by a Parisian named Monsieur Girard and his son to use direct mechanical action to drive pumps, saws, mills, or other heavy machinery. Installations have been built or are under construction in a number of countries, including Scotland, Portugal, Norway, the U.S.A., China, Japan, Australia and India. Where are the best waves? Generally, extreme latitudes and west coasts of continents. View global wave atlas (based on satellite data) and another world wave map The world's first commercial wave energy plant, .5 MW, developed by WaveGen is located in Isle of Islay, Scotland. Here is wave data from the National Data Buoy Center or the Army, or the Scripps West Coast wave data system. You can also try http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/General/wave.html or http://www.globalwavestatisticsonline.com/ for a fee. It has been estimated that the total available US wave energy resource is 23 GW- more than twice as much as Japan, and nearly five times as much as Great Britain. What is the impact on the environment? Unlike dams, wave power structures that are equally long-lived promise comparatively benign environmental effects. Wave power is renewable, green, pollution-free, and environmentally invisible, if not beneficial, particularly offshore. Its net potential (resource minus "costs") is equal to or better than wind, solar, small hydro or biomass power. What are the anticipated wave energy cost? It has been estimated that improving technology and economies of scale will allow wave generators to produce electricity at a cost comparable to wind-driven turbines, which produce energy at about 4.5 cents kWh. For now, the best wave generator technology in place in the United Kingdom is producing energy at an average projected/assessed cost of 7.5 cents kWh. In comparison, electricity generated by large scale coal burning power plants costs about 2.6 cents per kilowatt-hour. Combined-cycle natural gas turbine technology, the primary source of new electric power capacity is about 3 cents per kilowatt hour or higher. It is not unusual to average costs of 5 cents per kilowatt-hour and up for municipal utilities districts. What are some of the devices that harness wave energy? There are three basic methods for coverting wave energy to electricity: Float or buoy systems that use the rise and fall of ocean swells to drive hydraulic pumps. The object can be mounted to a floating raft or to a device fixed on the ocean floor. A series of anchored buoys rise and fall with the wave. The movement "strokes" an electrical generator and makes electricity that is then shipped ashore by underwater power cable Oscillating water column devices in which the in-and-out motion of waves at the shore enter a column and force air to turn a turbine. The column fills with water as the wave rises and empties as it descends. In the process, air inside the column is compressed and heats up, creating energy the way a piston does. That energy is then harnessed and sent to shore by electrical cable. "Tapered channel" or "tapchan" systems, rely on a shore-mounted structure to channel and concentrate the waves, driving them into an elevated reservoir. Water flow out of this reservoir is used to generate electricity, using standard hydropower technologies. Electricity from the Sea Why ocean wave energy? With acknowledgement to Capital Technology, Inc."While lagging behind wind and solar in commercial development, ocean wave power is a more promising resource than either: 1. Because waves originate from storms far out to sea and can travel long distances without significant energy loss, power produced from them is much steadier and more predictable, both day to day and season to season. This reduces project risk; 2. Wave energy contains roughly 1000 times the kinetic energy of wind, allowing much smaller and less conspicuous devices to produce the same amount of power in a fraction of the space; 3. Unlike wind and solar power, power from ocean waves continues to be produced around the clock, whereas wind velocity tends to die in the morning and at night, and solar is only available during the day in areas with relatively little cloud cover; 4. Wave power production is much smoother and more consistent than wind or solar, resulting in higher overall capacity factors; 5. Wave energy varies as the square of wave height, whereas wind power varies with the cube of air speed. Water being 850 times as dense as air, this results in much higher power production from waves averaged over time; 6. Estimating the potential resource is much easier than with wind, an important factor in attracting project lenders; 7. Because wave energy needs only 1/200 the land area of wind and requires no access roads, infrastructure costs are less; 8. Wave energy devices are quieter and much less visually obtrusive than wind devices, which typically run 40-60 meters in height and usually requiring remote siting with attendant high transmission costs. In contrast, 10 meter high wave energy devices can be integrated into breakwaters in busy port areas, producing power exactly where it is needed; 9. When constructed with materials developed for use on off-shore oil platforms, ocean wave power devices (which contain few moving parts) should cost less to maintain than those powered by wind; Even though wave energy is at the very beginning of the manufacturing learning curve, capital costs per net kw are already down in the range of wind energy devices, and below solar. In areas of higher power costs, such as diesel-based communities not connected to the grid, investment returns from wave energy projects are potentially very attractive. In 1909, ocean wave power was used to light lamps on the Huntington Beach Wharf until a storm carried the apparatus out to sea. Long-term reliability of the OWC technology has now been demonstrated, with one device in India still going strong after 10 years of continuous operation."

COULD MEMORIES BE DARK MATTER?

If dark matter was the substance of memories that would solve a lot of unknowns and be able to make them known. First thing first, why can we not inject memories? Why can’t we download our school? Why can we ever figure out how to inject fake memories of school and be done with school in an hour a day, and the majority of the schooling process would be aimed at creating social skills and learning new creations and inventions outside the box of learning. We waste so much time learning. Why can’t we figure out how to get right into the head itself and create all logic and knowledge to be able to be recalled at any giving time in our lives? Why can I remember the cracks in the ice as I through the rock onto the iced over river and watch it break through when I was 6 years old? I can’t remember the day before that and bairly the day after the event itself. Where does the memory go? Are the memories stored up as a chemical process in the brain? The memories would have to be related to more than just a site, smell touch but also the emotion you get when remembering the feeling you had. Perhaps our memories are made up of dark matter in a demention that can only be reached through focus on the memories in ones life. When a buddist goes into deep meditation does he actually leave this world and travel to the following dimention where the memories reside? If the memories are stored inside the brain and the brain actually records everything, then a memory should be able to be duplicated using the exact same chemicals and process that the brain used in order to create that retained memory. What is there is not a direct recording inside the brain but the brain acts as a supernatural link to the actual memory that can be downloaded in the realm of the dark matter? The studies on memory? Do they have any conclusive evidence at this?

Solving Global Warming and Continant Drought

"Computer simulations show that climatic benefits of the proposed geo-engineering scheme would be modest, with the potential to exacerbate global warming should it fail," said study co-author Dr Andrew Yool of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).

If international governmental policies fail to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to levels needed to keep the impacts of human-induced climate change within acceptable limits it may necessary to move to 'Plan B'. This could involve the implementation of one or more large-scale geo-engineering schemes proposed for reducing the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere.

One possible approach is to engineer the oceans to facilitate the long-term sequestration of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It has been suggested that this could be done by pumping of nutrient-rich water from a depth of several hundred metres to fertilize the growth of phytoplankton, the tiny marine algae that dominate biological production in surface waters.

The aim would be to mimic the effects of natural ocean upwelling and increase drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide by phytoplankton through the process of photosynthesis. Some of the sequestered carbon would be exported to the deep ocean when phytoplankton die and sink, effectively removing it from the system for hundreds or thousands of years.

A previous study, of which Yool was lead author, used an ocean general circulation model to conclude that literally hundreds of millions of pipes would be required to make a significant impact on global warming. But even if the technical and logistical difficulties of deploying the vast numbers of pipes could be overcome, exactly how much carbon dioxide could in principle be sequestered, and at what risk?

In the new study, the researchers address such questions using a more integrated model of the whole Earth system. The simulations show that, under most optimistic assumptions, three gigatons of carbon dioxide per year could be captured. This is under a tenth of the annual anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, which currently stand at 36 gigatons per year. A gigaton is a million million kilograms.

One surprising feature of the simulations was that the main effect occurred on land rather than the ocean. Cold water pumped to the surface cooled the atmosphere and the land surface, slowing the decomposition of organic material in soil, and ultimately resulting in about 80 per cent of the carbon dioxide sequestered being stored on land. "This remote and distributed carbon sequestration would make monitoring and verification particularly challenging," write the researchers.

More significantly, when the simulated pumps were turned off, the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and surface temperatures rose rapidly to levels even higher than in the control simulation without artificial pumps. This finding suggests that there would be extra environmental costs to the scheme should it ever need to be turned off for unanticipated reasons.

"All models make assumptions and there remain many uncertainties, but based on our findings it is hard to see the use of artificial pumps to boost surface production as being a viable way of tackling global warming," said Yool.

What is above was based off of a 2005 expirement according to my analysis. What I believe the expirement failed to add is the rest of the habitat. You cannot have a flood of algae without an ecosystem of fshimp, plankton, and fish feeding off and removing it so that it is contained. There is also a need for the algae to come back the next year. I believe that if spaced systematically along currents, that waves of algae can create layers of clouds that can be calculated and predicted. If the algae produces a certain amount of high pressure, low pressure, fog, cloud formation... you name it, all can contribute to a shift in wheather on a larger scale.

Overestimate fueled state's landmark diesel law

Overestimate fueled state's landmark diesel law

Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau (revision J. Lefor)

(10-08) 04:00 PDT Sacramento - --

California grossly miscalculated (lied about) pollution levels in a scientific analysis (Con-artist project) used to toughen the state's clean-air standards, and scientists (con artists) have spent the past several months revising data (falsified evidence) and planning a significant weakening (government control) of the landmark regulation, The Chronicle has found.

The pollution estimate (fabrication of falsified evidence) in question was too high - by 340 percent, according to the California Air Resources Board, the state agency charged with researching and adopting air quality standards. The estimate (fabrication of falsified evidence)  was a key part in the creation of a regulation adopted by the Air Resources Board (Bureaucracy for total Nazi like control over California)  in 2007, a rule that forces businesses to cut diesel emissions by replacing or making costly upgrades to heavy-duty, diesel-fueled off-road vehicles used in construction and other industries. (The private sector jobs that was lost in California)

The staff of the powerful and widely respected (Nazi Regime) Air Resources Board said the overestimate (extreme fabrication of falsified evidence)   is largely due to the board (fake scientists) calculating emissions before the economy slumped (which they cause from the new ruling), which halted the use of many of the 150,000 diesel-exhaust-spewing vehicles in California. Independent researchers, (real scientists in the private sector) however, found huge overestimates (gianormously extreme fabrication of falsified evidence) in the air board's work on diesel emissions and attributed the flawed work to a faulty method of calculation (without the use of math) - not the economic downturn. (Which was cause from the evidence of gianormously extreme fabrication of falsified huge overestimates)

The overestimate, which comes after another bad calculation by the air board on diesel-related deaths that made headlines in 2009, prompted the board to suspend (lay down the hammer and sickle) the regulation this year while officials decided whether to weaken the rule.

Proposal announced

On Thursday, after months of work, the air board and construction industry officials announced a proposal that includes delaying the start of the requirements until 2014 and exempting more vehicles from the rule. It would be a major scaling back of the rule if the air board approves it in a vote scheduled for December. The announcement was made as The Chronicle was preparing to publish this report, which had been in the works for several weeks.
The setbacks in the air board's research - and the proposed softening of a landmark regulation - raise questions about the performance of the agency as it is in the midst of implementing the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006  (Absolute world power domination) - or AB32 (AWPD) as it is commonly called, one of the state's and the nation's most ambitious (criminal) environmental policies to date.
AB32, which aims to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020, has come under intense political attack this year as the state prepares to elect a new governor. Critics cast the law as a jobs killer (REALLY?) because of the expenses to industry and businesses (loss of businesses) in conforming to new pollution regulations. Supporters say it will reinvigorate the state's economy and create thousands (ten) of new jobs in the emerging green sector. (Which doesn’t exist)
Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has promised (promises, promises) to suspend the law for at least a year, while Democrat Jerry Brown supports the law. California voters, meanwhile, will vote on Proposition 23, a November initiative to suspend AB32 (AWPD) until the unemployment rate - now at 12.4 percent in California - falls to 5.5 percent or less for a year. (Or everybody moves away because they have lost their job)

No answers

Mary Nichols, (Head of the Nazi Regime) chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, offered no explanation when The Chronicle questioned her about the diesel emissions miscalculation. She was recently asked why the air board estimate of a nitrous oxide source was off by at least a factor of two - air board scientists (her personal paid con artists) have since revised their numbers, and data show the estimate was off by 340 percent. Nichols' response: "I can't answer that for you." (I don’t understand how math works, I just take the falsified evidence they create, increase it more, then pass it along until I get and estimate that I can use to achieve more power for my bureaucracy)
Nichols was emphatic, though, when asked whether she has concerns about other scientific calculations made by air board scientists.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no and no," (hail, hail, hail, hail, hail, hail) she said.
Members of Nichols' board don't have an answer for the overestimate either, said Ron Roberts, an air board member who is a Republican supervisor in San Diego County and who voted in favor of the diesel regulation.
"One of the hardest things about being (a Nazi) on the board is separating fact (falsified evidence) from political fancy, (gianormously extreme fabrication of falsified evidence)" Roberts said.

Roberts has been on the board for 15 years and said the agency has built a solid scientific reputation, but he said the board can't afford another mistake (evidence of corruption leaking out) and he still does not know what really happened. (He was getting medicated with medicinal marajana and Prozac)

"I think somehow some very poor decisions (flat out lies and corruption)   have been made and politics have entered the picture too much," he said. "There are plenty of excuses but no explanations." (Except that a Nazi Regime wanted power over California)

The regulation - called the In-Use Off-Road Diesel Vehicle Regulation (Death to small business in Ca) - was adopted by the board in July 2007 to cut the amount of (business in CA) emissions released by diesel vehicles, with some exceptions, that aren't operated on regular roads and highways. Most of the affected vehicles are used in construction, mining and airport ground support and include such machinery as bulldozers, dump trucks, forklifts and cranes. (Businesses in the private sector)

The construction industry had said the rule would cost construction businesses $10 billion to $12 billion in equipment purchases or upgrades required to make the machines run cleaner. (I smell a $10 billion lawsuit?)

The regulation restricts the emission of two pollutants - nitrous oxide and particulate matter - to meet federal clean-air standards and to benefit public health. (The Nazi Regime)

Praise and criticism

Most standards created by the board have been praised as groundbreaking in the fight against pollution, but recent errors have also made the board a target for criticism.
One of the major recent problems was an air board estimate of premature deaths caused by particulate matter spewing from diesel engines. The first calculation (false evidence) found 18,000 deaths a year in the state had links to particulate matter. That has been revised down by nearly half.
The revision was ordered after the board scientist (con artists) who oversaw that study was ousted as having faked his scientific credentials.
Roberts and other board members were not told by Nichols that the scientist, Hien Tran, lied about earning a doctorate from UC Davis before they voted in favor of regulations based in part on his science (gianormously extreme fabrication of falsified evidence). That vote took place in December 2008.
Nichols, who acknowledges she knew about the falsification prior to the vote, has apologized for not sharing that information with her fellow board members.
Roberts called the spate of errors "a major black eye" for the board. He said he does not know why the process to fix them is taking longer than first expected.

Changing data

Top researchers at the air board said they are dealing with complex issues and that their jobs (of lying) have been made harder because the economic downturn has shut down some of the pollution-emitting machines that were in use in industries like construction and trucking.
Todd Sax, chief of the board's mobile source analysis branch, said scientists are trying to keep up with changes in the economy to have the best pollution estimates and to ensure the state meets federal air-quality obligations.
"We've been trying to get the numbers right, and the recession continues to take hold," Sax said, adding that his branch is "constantly re-evaluating" its numbers.
Their latest estimate for sources of nitrous oxide found that off-road vehicles are burning 228 million gallons of diesel fuel per year. The previous estimate was 1 billion gallons, which means the first estimate was 340 percent higher than the new calculation. Sax said roughly half of that is due to the recession but the other half is due to a revised method of calculation (née meni mingy mo) that focuses more directly on the amount of fuel sold instead of estimates about equipment use.
The problem, and the revised counting method, came to light after Robert Harley, a UC Berkeley professor of environmental engineering, and a colleague at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory did their own evaluation, which was published in December in the journal Atmospheric Environment.

While air board officials and other defenders of the board's science point to the economy as a major factor in the overestimates, Harley found that prior to the recession the board's estimates of nitrous oxide were too high by a factor of 4.5 (450% off) and its estimate of particulate matter was off by a factor of 3.1, an extraordinarily high amount to be off scientifically. (even for fabricated bullshit)

"The difference is large enough that it changes policy," Harley said.

Harley said he has not found major discrepancies in other industrial sectors - such as trucking - where the air board has estimated pollution emissions.

Meanwhile, the estimate of premature deaths linked to diesel engine particulate matter has been downsized to 9,200 from the previous studies estimate of 18,000. Bart Croes, chief of research for the air board, noted that the board used an entirely new model developed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency that more directly links pollution with mortality and that the levels of uncertainty are much smaller under the new estimate.

The Air Resources Board acknowledges that the new estimates mean that emitters of the pollution would need to make significantly smaller - and in turn less expensive - changes to their vehicles.

Orchestrated delay?

Some construction industry leaders, whose businesses have been a major target for reducing pollution, said they have long been skeptical of the board's estimates. They had eagerly awaited proposals for regulation changes, and some even believe the air board was intentionally slowing down the adoption of changes to lie low while the debate over AB32 rages in the public forum.
"I think they're waiting till after November because they are really hoping the election goes one way that's more favorable than another and they would have a freer hand to do what they want to do," said Michael Lewis, president of the Construction Industry Air Quality Coalition, which monitors regulations affecting the industry.
The coalition supports Prop. 23, but has not made major donations to the campaign, Lewis said, citing the severe impact of the recession. "There's not a lot of money to spread around on ballot measures," he said.
The Associated General Contractors of America, which jointly announced the air board's proposed regulation scale-back Thursday, expressed satisfaction with the planned changes.
On Thursday, Michael Kennedy, general counsel for the industry group, called the proposed changes a "win-win" for industry and the air board, and called the board staff "fair." The group said that despite the significant flaws, the air board did the right thing.
Air board staff members are considering changing other regulations, too, including for on-road trucks, though there has been no formal agreement like the one announced Thursday.
Julie Sauls, spokeswoman for the California Trucking Association, said the delay has led to immense confusion in the industry over what regulations companies ultimately will have to comply with and when. The initial rules affecting trucks begin this year, and the more expensive regulations take effect and ramp up over the next several years.
She said she could only speculate on the delay, but said, "I think maybe they're just waiting" to see what happens on Election Day. The association has endorsed Prop. 23.

AB32 delays

While the air board has spent the past few months revising its diesel data, something else has happened: It has pushed back one of the most controversial parts of AB32 - the cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions.
The cap-and-trade regulation was expected to be put before the public for review this spring, but now board officials say it will be sometime this fall and will be voted on before the end of the year.
Nichols, the air board chairwoman, rejects notions that the air board is avoiding the spotlight, calling the delays the nature of science and adding that, "In politics people can fudge; in science you can't. The great benefit of science is it is peer-reviewed."
Dan Kalb, California Policy Manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists, which strongly supports cap-and-trade, said he is not aware of an orchestrated slowdown of work, but said the board is sensitive to the attention it is receiving.
"The Air Resources Board is trying to be as careful and thorough as they can. Everyone knows they're in the spotlight, the national spotlight," Kalb said. He said it did not matter to him if it takes longer than planned, "Just as long as they get it done."
No matter what happens, Nichols said her board will complete its work on AB32 by the mandated end-of-year deadline. "We are on schedule; there has been no delay," she said. Nichols said every new regulation involves times of uncertainty and requires time to come to the best rule.
"It's science and it's analysis, and it takes however long it takes," Nichols said.

About the board

The Legislature created the California Air Resources Board in 1967 to oversee the state's air quality by conducting research into sources of pollution and ways to remove it from the air, and by setting and enforcing emissions standards. It has an 11-member board and a large staff.
The air board sets the pollution limits used in vehicle smog checks and consumer products like spray paint and even sets standards for idling trucks and buses. It has created some of the strictest clean-air rules in the country. (Because it wants power over all just likes the Nazi’s)