8 billion tons is really a lot of coal

You climate-change deniers could give a little

Article by: RANDY SKJERLY
Updated: April 20, 2011 - 9:25 PM
Minneapolis Star Tribune

OK, deniers: Let's just roll with your unshakable belief that carbon emissions aren't causing climate changes.

Glacier National Park, which once had 125 glaciers, now has 20. The pine bark beetle has edged into Yellowstone.

A shipping lane has opened through the Arctic. Storms keep getting bigger and more violent blah blah you've heard it all so let's set theory aside for things easy to Google.

Each of the 400 coal-fired plants around the United States emit an average of 366,000 tons of hazardous air pollutants per year -- mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide.

These fumes and particulates kill an estimated 15,000 U.S. citizens yearly from heart attacks, lung disease, cancer and asthma. Most bodies of water are so contaminated by mercury you'd scarcely dare eat fish from them.

I rolled with you on point A: Mankind's pollution may not be causing climate change.

Are you with me on point B: Smokestack exhausts are hazardous to humans and the ecosystem? Yes?

You remain, nonetheless, hostile to regulation aimed at curbing emissions. Most likely you fear your utility will pass along the cost, increasing your electric bill.

As well, you fear that if manufacturing plants pay more for electricity, they will pass the increased cost of goods on to you. That is why you call cap-and-trade "cap and tax."

(Continued here. This article was written in response to one entitled "Climate change is natural, and we don't have the data to predict it" by Jason Lewis, a nationally syndicated talk-show host based in Minneapolis-St. Paul.)

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