It is important that the impacted stakeholders or representatives evaluate long-term versus short-term impacts separately.
The report concentrated on the likely short-term impacts of the vote.
The question is not only one of direct, short-term impacts, but of leadership.
"That will have pretty profound short-term impacts," Mr. Anderson said.
The federal agency downplayed the short-term impacts on Sunday, when EPA toxicologist Deborah McKean was quoted as saying that the plume would not have "caused significant health effects" to animals.
The short-term impacts of coal were still on display – some of the most dramatic smog episodes of the year in major cities of China including Shanghai and Beijing were blamed on coal-burning.
The short-term impacts have largely died down and the plane looks considerably better – helped along by a quirk of atmospheric chemistry which sees nitrous oxide pollution from the aircraft engines causing cooling during this period by destroying methane in the air.
Mark Spalding, a professor at the University of California at San Diego who has studied and favors whale watching, said at a policy forum on the subject in March: "There is no question there are short-term impacts on whales of whale watching, including behavioral changes, breathing, dives and flight.
To measure the short-term impacts, they analyzed satellite images of winter ice from 1992 to 2010 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a major harp seal breeding region off Canada's eastern coast, and compared the changes in ice cover to the number of dead pup strandings counted each year.
