Is This Game Boy Science?

By Rich Kozlovich

On August 30th Steve Milloy's Junkscience.com posted a link to an article that claimed, “Pollution causes 200,000 deaths each year in the U.S.”In this article they cite a study that claims, "Not only does pollution purportedly cause 200,000 premature deaths every year, people dying from air pollution lose a decade of life." And naturally the arrived at the conclusion that, “A public-health burden of this magnitude clearly requires significant policy attention, especially since technologies are readily available to address a significant fraction of these emissions,” says Levy, who was not involved in the research. “We have certainly invested significant societal resources to address far smaller impacts on public health.” In short - give us more regulations, more control and lots and lots of funding.

Junkscience called this study, "Classic junkscience brought to us by MIT." I can't say if it's junk science or not because I didn't really see how they came to their conclusions, but it does seem to me that computer modeling played a major role. Computer modeling isn't science. It certainly is a component of science, but trusting computer model conclusions to develop public policy decisions isn't rational, because it's much like a Game Boy doing exactly what it is told. Preconceived conclusions in....preconceived conclusions out.

One of the things I have done over the years is to peruse the comments left on posts appearing on Junkscience.com. The readers on this site post comments that are not only quite bright, but insightful. I have listed some of these as they point out flaws in this study's conclusions and question the methodology. One asked the same obvious question Steve Milloy keeps asking......where are the bodies?

Here are a few comments.

garyk30 - “people dying from air pollution lose a decade of life. “A public health burden of this magnitude clearly requires significant policy attention” Going to tables that show the life expectancy at various ages, we find that the loss of 10 years of possible life has a male dying at the age of 76.5 and a female dying at the age of 79.5. Those are the average ages of death these days. Amazing, they have ‘proved’that pollution causes some people to die just when you would expect them to die.

Jon R Salmi- This is death by computer model.-, not pollution.

chris y- Ross McKitrick, in the Financial Post on May 16, 2011, (Ontario’s power trip: the failure of the green energy act) looked at premature deaths from particulate pollution in Ontario, Canada, and had this gem of a comment-“According to Environment Canada, dust from unpaved roads in Ontario puts a whopping 90,116 tonnes of PM2.5 into our air each year, nearly 130 times the amount from coal-fired power generation. Using the Clean Air Alliance method for computing deaths, particulates from country-road usage kills 40,739 people per year, quite the massacre considering there are only about 90,000 deaths from all causes in Ontario each year. Who knew? That quiet drive up back country roads to the cottage for a weekend of barbecues, cozy fires and marshmallow roasts is a form of genocide. Of course such a conclusion is absurd,…”

dd - Academia now operates with the Chicago Way. Corruption, bribes, and incompetence dominate the politically correct scene. No wonder the US has fallen off the charts of educated people. US Academia is dumber than a 5th grader.

Coach Springer- My God, this Chu person has uncovered the reason why Ehrlich’s population bomb hasn’t happened. We keep dying off too quickly to detonate it. So, either it’s a good thing or we’re doomed anyway. That may not be science, but it is environ-mental. Everything we do to increase our life makes it shorter. There’s probably a way to follow through with her numbers to find the contradiction, McKittrick style, such as how man-made PM2.5 is insignificant in relation to the model death that should result from natural sources. I just don’t have the stomach or the time to do it every time a new study using assumptions and models comes up. Just a game of spotting the maybes and the what-if assumptions in the non-results.