Biden Federal Government Goes Full Suicide Bomber Against America

May 14, 2023/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

From his first days in office, President Biden has promised — threatened — to activate the administrative state at every level to address and solve the “climate crisis.” In the orthodoxy of the Biden/Democrat climate cult, this is to be accomplished by reducing U.S. carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Now, even if you believe that a little more CO2 in the atmosphere is some kind of a problem (it isn’t), there is nothing that the United States can do to have any meaningful impact on that situation, given that countries with populations a large multiple of ours (China, India, Africa) are building coal-fired power plants as fast as they can. Even if we closed our economy entirely and reduced ourselves to eating grass and bugs, the effect on the climate would be zilch.

Meanwhile we have waited through the first two plus years of Bidenism to find out exactly what punishments the administrative state has in mind for us for our sins of prosperity and enjoyment of life. In the last few weeks, we have learned at least part of the answer, in the form of a series of gigantic new regulatory proposals emanating from EPA and other agencies. The answer is, the federal government will become a suicide bomber seeking to blow up and destroy the American economy and the well-being of the American people.

Here are three major regulatory initiatives from the past few weeks, each one supposedly somehow addressing this “climate crisis” thing:

• On April 12, EPA released its proposed rule titled “Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light- Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles.” This rule essentially makes it impossible for automobile manufacturers to produce anything but fully-electric vehicles within a few years.

• On May 5, the Department of Energy released proposed new “efficiency” standards for dishwashers.

• And then on May 8, EPA released the mother of all regulations, with the endless title “New Source Performance Standards for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from New, Modified, and Reconstructed Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units; Emission Guidelines for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Existing Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units; and Repeal of the Affordable Clean Energy Rule.” This is the long-awaited regulation that seeks a complete transformation of the electricity-generation sector of the economy, toward something that has never been demonstrated to work and whose cost is without doubt a large multiple of the system we now have.

I previously covered the new vehicle rule, really an EV mandate, in this post on May 5. True to form of regulators who treat their subjects with contempt, the rule never explicitly states that the cars we now use are henceforth to be banned. Rather, it is some 262 pages of impenetrable text, which has buried somewhere deep inside a formula (82 g/mile CO2 emissions) that only an industry professional would know effectively bans internal combustion vehicles. All manufacturers are to be forced to comply, irrespective of whether they can do so profitably.

What is the probability that the new EV mandate will put all large U.S. and European automakers out of business in favor of Chinese competitors who have an advantage in the EV segment? The regulators neither know nor care. From Engineering & Technology, May 9:

According to insurers Allianz Trade, China’s decision to invest heavily in EV production over the last 15 years has made it the global leader in this sector. . . . Chinese brands have seen their global market shares climb from less than 40 per cent in 2020 to close to 50 per cent in 2022. This is heavily bolstered by an 80 per cent market share in their densely-populated home country.

In the world of dishwashers, we already have dishwashers that don’t work very well. The reason is regulator-imposed restrictions on use of energy and water. Today, due to these restriction, dishwashers run for more than two hours, and still don’t get the dishes very clean unless you pre-wash them by hand. Well, with the new Energy Department rule, it’s about to get a lot worse. From the WSJ, May 12:

The proposal requires manufacturers to slash water use by a third, limiting machines to 3.2 gallons per cycle, down from the current federal limit of five gallons. New appliances must simultaneously cut estimated annual energy usage by nearly 30%.

And then there is the new power plant rule. This one is 682 pages. Again, it never explicitly says that fossil fuel power plants are banned; it’s just that the emissions standards that they set cannot be met by any fossil fuel plant. The WSJ on May 11 calls the rule a “death sentence” for fossil fuel power plants.

Supposedly the fossil fuel plants can continue to operate if they adopt some means to capture the carbon emissions from their exhaust. I have previously described this idea of carbon capture as a “war against the second law of thermodynamics.” Trying to capture CO2 from power plant emissions requires energy, and the higher the percentage of the emissions you want to capture, the more energy it takes. If you insist on capturing all of the emissions and somehow storing them permanently, it’s going to take more energy than the power plant produces. There has been endless talk about carbon capture for more than a decade, and there is almost nothing in the way of functional carbon capture systems, because as they capture enough carbon to be meaningful, their cost soars out of control.

Will there be any functional replacement for the fossil fuel plants by the time they are forced out of business? This rule doesn’t trouble itself with such matters. That’s for the low status people to figure out. Over here at EPA, we are much too important for that. Our job is to save the planet.

So the regulatory onslaught continues. We are told to expect yet more such regulations, notably in the area of home appliances, in the near future.

Put it all together, and the term “war against the economy” no longer does justice to what is going on. This is a full-blown attack by suicide bombers. They are so crazed with the righteousness of their cause that they couldn’t care less about the destruction and devastation they might cause to the innocent people around them, let alone even about their own death. Who ever thought our federal government would get into such a role?

How The Left Views Administrative Law: A Highlight From The Federalist Society Convention

November 12, 2022/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian   

You may have seen that the Federalist Society has been holding its annual convention in Washington. I was there on Thursday and Friday. They have recorded all the presentations. If you want to watch some, go to this link and see what interests you.

There was not a lot of moaning about the election results. Rather, the focus was on high-minded issues, mostly of constitutional and administrative law.

I have selected a highlight that you may find interesting. One of the lunchtime panels on Thursday was titled “Render Law Unto Congress and Execution Unto the Executive: The Supreme Court Rebalances Constitutional Power.” Here is the description of the subject of the panel:

The Roberts Court is recasting the administrative state according to its view of the separation of powers. It is giving the President more authority to fire his subordinates and creating a hierarchical executive where the President and his principal officers have more authority over appointments and decision making. It is forcing the legislature to speak clearly when it wants to vest agencies with major powers and expressing interest in reinvigorating limits on some delegations of legislative power. It is strengthening the judiciary’s interpretative role, declining to give as much deference to regulatory interpretations by agencies. Is its view coherent and sound? Should the Court square its vision with a modern government that was formed on different principles? If so, how?

The full video of the panel, 1:23:30 in length, can be found at this link. The panel featured four speakers (Nicholas Parrillo of the Yale Law School, Aditya Bamzai of the Virginia Law School, Thomas Griffith, formerly Judge of the DC Circuit, and Sally Katzen of NYU Law School) describing and debating the merits of recent Supreme Court cases that have articulated something called the Major Questions Doctrine as a limit on administrative agency power to promulgate regulations of sweeping import without clear statutory basis. The most important of the cases under discussion was West Virginia v. EPA, the June 30 Supreme Court decision that held that EPA’s Clean Power Plan — a mechanism to shut down all generation of electricity using fossil fuels — exceeded the agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act.

As is typical on Federalist Society panels, the majority were conservative scholars or judges, who thus were generally supportive of the Court’s approach, although offering a variety of perspectives. However, the fourth panelist, in this case Ms. Katzen of NYU, was a die-hard left-winger. It fell to Ms. Katzen to defend the position that EPA was well within its powers under the CAA to promulgate a regulation that would force the closure of all coal power plants in a short period of time, followed in short order by all natural gas power plants over the next decade or so.

In her opening remarks (beginning about the 31 minute mark of the video at the link) Ms. Katzen described Congress as having become a completely dysfunctional institution that has been paralyzed by partisanship and can barely pass a spending bill to keep the government operating, let alone address any serious policy issue with major legislation. Meanwhile, she noted that since adoption of the Constitution the country had become huge, wealthy, and enormously complex. Thus Congress has seen fit to delegate the problems of dealing with the great complexities to specialists and experts in various fields. But now, said Ms. Katzen, her voice dripping with scorn, the Supreme Court has decreed that only the dysfunctional Congress can address the most critical issues facing us. She was particularly critical of the Court having struck down the Clean Power Plan, which in her view was well within the authority granted to EPA under the CAA, as well as being a subject that could only properly be dealt with by people with the necessary expertise, such as the bureaucrats at EPA.

Before reading on, you might consider whether those arguments appear persuasive to you.

After the panelists’ remarks, there was a period for questions from the audience. I managed to maneuver myself into a position to get to the microphone and ask the first question. I’m going to transcribe my question and Ms. Katzen’s response. This begins at 1:04:24 of the video:

Question: Thank you. My name is Francis Menton. My affiliation is Manhattan Contrarian. That’s my blog; many people here may read it. So out there we have the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Air Act basically gives the EPA the authority to regulate “pollutants.” And then a decade or so ago the EPA decided that carbon dioxide was a pollutant. And I guess this question is mainly for Professor Katzen. So carbon dioxide has been declared a pollutant by the EPA. They’re an “expert.” 

Does that mean, could the EPA then, on its own authority, say, well, airplanes all generate carbon dioxide, we hereby say they must be all grounded? Oh, and industry must be ended, that generates carbon dioxide. And 80% of our electricity generation is fossil fuel, generates carbon dioxide. And of course all automobiles, so you can’t drive them any more. Can the EPA do that? Or does that go beyond what they’ve been authorized to do? And if it goes beyond, what is the limiting principle? Do you have one, or are you completely fine with that if EPA does that?

Professor Katzen: I’m not sure I completely followed because there’s a lot of distracting noise out there. But the Congress clearly gave the EPA authority to specify those pollutants that are dangerous and should be regulated, and to set limits for them based on that which is necessary to protect the public health, with an adequate margin of safety and all that. There are standards to be applied. They can’t just say “no cars.” I don’t think that would survive any kind of judicial review.

Me: What’s the standard?

Professor Katzen: (Several seconds delay) The standard as set forth in the Clean Air Act is the scientific basis for levels to be set. That’s not — I’m not an environmental lawyer, and maybe there are others here who could provide the exact terminology. But the EPA is not able to and does not do whatever it has a whim to do when it wakes up in the morning. It bases it normally through rule-making through notice and comment, cost/benefit analysis, scientific determinations, that are subject to the critique and then response by the agency. 

You may not be happy with the answer any more than I was not happy when they stayed the Clean Power Plan in the first place, even though it had not yet gone through the courts. It was an extreme action taken to shut down rule-making in this area. And I thought that was unfortunate that we were never able to develop the kind of record that would enable sensible people to see if the agency was acting within its authority as granted by Congress. 

I am not saying that the organic statute or the authorizing statute is meaningless. It survives. But if it is granted authority, then the agency should be able to use it, even if the pollutant is something that they didn’t think of when they passed the statute, or weren’t aware of when they passed the statute. Any more than under the FCC Act, it was radio, that was in 1933, it was radio, but it was interpreted to mean television. It wasn’t a big step.

It’s too bad this wasn’t a cross examination, because Professor Katzen was trapped, and it would have been fun to keep pressing. The next obvious question would have been:  

“My question was, what’s the limiting principle? You haven’t answered. Please state the limiting principle. Do you have one or not?”

So Professor Katzen was completely outraged that the Supreme Court had struck down the Clean Power Plan (“it was an extreme action taken to shut down rule-making in this area”). Yet she couldn’t come up with any reason why, if EPA could force the shut down of all fossil fuel burning power plants, it could not also ban all burning of fossil fuels for airplanes, cars, industry, agriculture, home heat, etc. She flatly asserted “there are standards” without being able to specify any of them. (There are no meaningful standards in the statute that would constrain EPA in these circumstances, if the courts approved the Clean Power Plan.). 

The best she came up with was “notice and comment rule-making,” which is not a standard, but rather a procedure. It can be a time-consuming and burdensome procedure, and may generate thousands or even millions of comments, but at the end of that the EPA can just go ahead and implement the rule it started with and planned to implement all along. When Professor Katzen says that “EPA is not able to and does not do whatever it has a whim to do when it wakes up in the morning,” she is just plain wrong.

If you are wondering what the Clean Air Act may actually have to say on this subject, I would point out that the Act is lengthy and nearly incomprehensible. However, in the West Virginia litigation EPA had to come up with something in the CAA to point to as its authority for promulgating the Clean Power Plan, and the best it could do was Section 111(d) of the Act. Here is the text of that section:

(d) Standards of performance for existing sources; remaining useful life of source

(1) The Administrator shall prescribe regulations which shall establish a procedure similar to that provided by section 7410 of this title under which each State shall submit to the Administrator a plan which (A) establishes standards of performance for any existing source for any air pollutant (i) for which air quality criteria have not been issued or which is not included on a list published under section 7408(a) of this title or emitted from a source category which is regulated under section 7412 of this title but (ii) to which a standard of performance under this section would apply if such existing source were a new source, and (B) provides for the implementation and enforcement of such standards of performance. Regulations of the Administrator under this paragraph shall permit the State in applying a standard of performance to any particular source under a plan submitted under this paragraph to take into consideration, among other factors, the remaining useful life of the existing source to which such standard applies.

(2)The Administrator shall have the same authority—

(A) to prescribe a plan for a State in cases where the State fails to submit a satisfactory plan as he would have under section 7410(c) of this title in the case of failure to submit an implementation plan, and

(B) to enforce the provisions of such plan in cases where the State fails to enforce them as he would have under sections 7413 and 7414 of this title with respect to an implementation plan.

In promulgating a standard of performance under a plan prescribed under this paragraph, the Administrator shall take into consideration, among other factors, remaining useful lives of the sources in the category of sources to which such standard applies.

Make of all that mumbo jumbo what you will. What is certainly not there is any limiting principle or standard that constrains what EPA may do to effectively ban use of fossil fuel energy in all sectors, once it is accepted that EPA can regulate CO2 as a “pollutant.” Instead what is found in that section is blanket authority to EPA to set “standards of performance.” And in the Clean Power Plan EPA has set those “standards” in a way to make all use of fossil fuels in electricity generation non-compliant over time. If the courts allowed EPA to do that under this section, there would be nothing to stop it, if it wanted, from setting “standards” to make fossil fuels non-compliant in other sectors.

Here’s the bottom line: Under a statute that gives EPA general authority to set “standards of performance” with respect to “pollutants,” the progressives (including the liberal wing of the Supreme Court) are totally OK with allowing EPA to declare CO2 a “pollutant” 40 years after the statute was enacted, and then set “standards of performance” to ban CO2 and shut down the entire economy one sector at a time. Fortunately, with our current Supreme Court, we’ll get to see how this plays out in places like Germany and the UK before our federal government can impose it on all of us by executive fiat.

 

Clean Air and the Constitution

Editorial of The New York Sun | July 27, 2019

What a cornucopia of constitutional questions is on offer in the battle looming between America and 13 states over automobile pollution standards. It has burst into the news with the decision of four automakers to defy the federal government's efforts to relax regulation of pollution and instead bow -- after what the New York Times calls "secret negotiations" -- to California and other states that want to maintain tighter regulations.

This is happening as part of the resistance to the decision of the voters in 2016. They elected, in Donald Trump, a president committed more generally to rolling back overly strict environmental standards. We sense that the automobile emissions fight could end up in the Supreme Court, with a decision that, like the border wall ruling in favor of Mr. Trump, confounds the Democrats and vindicates the deep Constitution...............Continue Reading

The Obama EPA’s crooked prosecutors

The agency’s carbon dioxide climate “endangerment finding” was a kangaroo court process

Paul Driessen

Suppose a crooked prosecutor framed someone and was determined to get a conviction. So he built an entire case on tainted, circumstantial evidence, and testimony from witnesses who had their reasons for wanting the guy in jail. Suppose the prosecutor ignored or hid exculpatory evidence and colluded with the judge to prevent the defendant from presenting a robust defense or cross-examining adverse witnesses.  

You know what would happen – at least in a fair and just society. The victim would be exonerated and compensated. The prosecutor and judge would be disbarred, fined and jailed.

What you may not know is that the Obama EPA engaged in similar prosecutorial misconduct to convict fossil fuels of causing climate chaos and endangering the health and wellbeing of Americans.

EPA then used its carbon dioxide “Endangerment Finding” to justify anti-fossil fuel regulations, close down coal-fired power plants, block pipeline construction, and exempt wind and solar installations from endangered species rules. It put the agency in control of America’s energy, economy, job creation and living standards. It drove up energy prices, killed numerous jobs, and sent families into energy poverty.

EPA’s egregious misconduct inflicted significant harm on our nation. Having acted to repeal the Obama Clean Power Plan, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt must reverse carbon dioxide’s conviction and scuttle the Endangerment Finding that serves as the foundation and justification for the agency’s war on coal, oil and natural gas. Any harm from fossil fuels or carbon dioxide is minuscule, compared to the extensive damages inflicted by the decision and subsequent regulations.

President Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson took office determined to blame carbon dioxide for “dangerous” and “unprecedented” manmade global warming and climate change. They then used that preordained decision to justify closing coal-fired power plants and dramatically restricting fossil fuel use. Mr. Obama had promised to “bankrupt” coal companies. Ms. Browner wasted no time in decreeing that CO2 from oil, natural gas coal burning “endanger” human health and welfare. It was a kangaroo court.

Their Environmental Protection Agency did no research of its own. It simply cherry-picked UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and wrote a Technical Support Document to make its case. The TSD ignored studies that contradicted its predetermined Endangerment Finding – and relied on circumstantial evidence of climate and extreme weather disasters generated by computer models.

The models were programmed on the assumption that rising atmospheric CO2 levels are the primary or sole factor determining climate and weather. They assumed more carbon dioxide meant more planetary warming and worsening climate chaos. The role of the sun, cosmic rays, changing ocean currents and numerous other powerful, interconnected natural forces throughout Earth’s history was simply ignored.

The models predicted steadily increasing global temperatures and more frequent and intense storms. Instead, even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continued to rise, except for a noticeable temperature spike during the 2015-2016 super El Niño, there has been no planetary warming since 1998. Harvey finally ended a record 12-year drought in Category 3-5 hurricanes making landfall in the USA.

Tornado deaths are far less frequent than in the 1950s. Floods and droughts differ little from historic trends and cycles. Antarctic land ice is at record highs, and Arctic sea ice is again within its “normal” levels for the past 50 years. Seas are rising at just seven inches per century, the same as 100 years ago.

The models also assumed more warming meant more clouds that trapped more heat. They ignored the fact that low-lying clouds trap heat but also reflect solar heat back into the atmosphere. Humans might be “contributing” to temperature, climate and weather events, at least locally. But there is no real-world evidence that “greenhouse gases” have replaced natural forces to cause climate chaos or extreme weather – and no evidence that humans can control Earth’s fickle climate by controlling emissions.

In fact, with every passing year, climate model temperature forecasts have been increasingly higher than those actually observed over most of the lower atmosphere.

The EPA approach amounted to saying, if reality conflicts with the models, reality must be wrong – or to deciding that real world evidence should be homogenized, adjusted and manipulated to fit model results.

Indeed, that’s exactly what EPA, the IPCC and other alarmist researchers have done. Older historic records were adjusted downward, modern records got bumped upward a bit, and government-paid scientists ignored satellite data and relied increasingly on measurements recorded near (and contaminated by) airport jet exhaust, blacktop parking lots, and urban areas warmed by cars, heating and AC vents.

The IPCC also claimed its referenced studies were all peer-reviewed by experts. In reality, at least 30% were not; many were prepared by graduate students or activist groups; and some of its most attention-getting claims (of rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers, for example) were nothing more than brief email messages noting that these were “possible” outcomes. Moreover, most IPCC peer reviewers were scientists who fervently promote catastrophic manmade climate change perspectives, receive government and other grants for writing reports confirming this thesis, and take turns reviewing one another’s papers.

Despite these inconvenient facts, a steady barrage of Obama EPA press releases and statements from alarmist regulators and “experts” insisted that fossil fuels were causing planetary cataclysms. Anyone who tried to present alternative, realistic data or views was ridiculed, vilified and silenced.

Even one of EPA’s most senior experts was summarily removed from the review team.  “Your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision,” Alan Carlin’s supervisor told him.

Two additional facts dramatically underscore the kangaroo court nature of EPA’s 2009 proceedings.

First, oil, natural gas and coal still provide over 80% of America’s and the world’s energy. The International Energy Agency says they will be at least this important 25 years from now. Indeed, fossil fuels are the foundation for modern industries, transportation, communication, jobs, health and living standards. Emerging economic powerhouses like China and India, developing countries the world over, and even industrialized nations like Germany and Poland are using more of these fuels every year.

The Obama EPA studiously ignored these facts – and the tremendous benefits that fossil fuels bring to every aspect of our lives. Those benefits outweigh any asserted dangers – by orders of magnitude.

Second, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, as defined by the Clean Air Act – and was never listed in any legislation as a pollutant. It was turned into an alleged pollutant by dishonest, ideological EPA prosecutors, who needed to justify their anti-fossil fuel regulatory agenda.

In reality, carbon dioxide is the miracle molecule without which most life on Earth would cease to exist. It enables plants of all kinds to convert soil nutrients and water into the fibers, fruits and seeds that are essential to humans and animals. The more CO2 in the air, the faster and better plants grow, and the more they are able to withstand droughts, disease, and damage from insects and viruses. In the process, crop, forest and grassland plants, and ocean and freshwater phytoplankton, exhale the oxygen we breathe.

In rendering its endangerment decision, EPA ignored these incalculable CO2 benefits. It ignored experts and studies that would have provided vital information about the tremendous value to our planet and people from fossil fuels and carbon dioxide.

Finally, having a slightly warmer planet with more atmospheric CO2 would be hugely beneficial for plants, wildlife and humanity. By contrast, having a colder planet, with less carbon dioxide, would be seriously harmful for arable land extent, growing seasons, crops, people and wildlife habitats.

The EPA Endangerment Finding is the foundation for the Obama era Clean Power Plan and other rules. Reversing it is essential to moving forward with science-based energy and climate policies.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and other books on public policy.

Judge Gives EPA Until July to Identify Job Losses from Regulations

ByTatiana Lozano

A federal judge in West Virginia has given the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) less than seven months to review whether its Obama-era policies directly led to job losses in the coal industry, according to an order issued Wednesday.  As The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register reported, U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey rebuked the agency for failing to perform such reporting requirements in the past:

"EPA can recommend amendments to Congress if it feels strongly enough, but EPA's clear reticence to comply, coupled with eight years of refusal to comply — even in the face of congressional and public pressure — with the Clean Air Act, justifies an injunction detailed enough to ensure compliance.""It is time for the EPA to recognize that Congress makes the law, and EPA must not only enforce the law, it must obey it," he continued........Read more

Safe and healthy (not pristine) air

Federal air quality rules must be based on science – not used to stifle energy and industry

 

Paul Driessen

 

It’s called the Clean Air Act, but it was never intended to ensure pure, pristine air. Congress wanted America to have safe, healthy air, and regulations based on solid scientific and medical studies.

 

The law says costs cannot be considered where human health and safety are actually at stake. But legislators also understood that efforts to bring emissions to zero are unnecessary, technologically impossible, extremely expensive, harmful to electricity generation, factory output, job creation and retention, and living standards – and thus likely to reduce human health, wellbeing and longevity.

 

The Obama Environmental Protection Agency ignored these facts and employed highly dubious analyses to justify stringent new emission standards that impose enormous costs for no health benefits. The new Congress and Trump Administration must now restore integrity, rigor and balance to the process.

 

A good place to begin is with EPA’s rules for fine particulates: PM2.5, soot particles smaller than 2.5 microns (a fraction of the size of pollen and mold spores). EPA claims reducing PM2.5 emissions from power plants, factories, refineries, petrochemical plants, cars, light trucks, and diesel-powered vehicles and heavy equipment will save countless lives. In fact, it says, nearly all the (supposed) benefits from its Clean Power Plan and other recent rules are actually “ancillary benefits” from reducing PM2.5 levels.

 

Premature mortality is “associated with” fine particle pollution “at the lowest levels measured,” Obama EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has said. “There is no level at which premature death does not occur.” If we could further reduce particulate pollution, previous Obama EPA chief Lisa Jackson told Congress, it would be like “finding a cure for cancer” – hundreds of thousands of lives saved.

These assertions have no basis in reality. Even EPA’s own studies show they are predicated on two things: epidemiological analyses that count deaths within normal variations in death rates and attribute them to soot emissions; and experiments that unethically exposed humans to PM2.5 concentrations at levels which EPA says cause cardiovascular and respiratory disease, cancer and people “dying sooner than they should.”

The agency’s air pollution epidemiological studies are compromised by uncontrollable “confounding factors.” No data exist on actual individual exposure levels, so researchers cannot reliably attribute specific deaths to particulates, emergency room physician John Dunn explains. Moreover, PM2.5 particles emitted by vehicles, power plants and factories cannot be separated from particles from volcanoes, forest fires, construction projects, dust storms, agricultural activities, and even cigarettes that send hundreds of times more tiny particles into lungs than what EPA says is lethal if they come from sources it regulates.

Nor does a death certificate determine whether a death was caused by airborne particles – or by viruses, bacteria, dietary and exercise habits, obesity, smoking, diabetes, cold weather or countless other factors.

 

If particulates are a short-term cause of death, there should be a clear association between bad air and deaths within clusters of similar areas, and effects should be consistent across clusters, notes statistician Stan Young in discussing causation versus association.  However, a recent re-analysis of 1969-1974 data from 533 US counties confirmed the previous conclusion: improved air quality did not reduce mortality.

 

Similarly, in 2002, Canadian forest fires sent massive amounts of smoke (composed largely of PM2.5 particles) into Boston and New York City. EPA doctrine says deaths should have shot up, but they did not. 2008 forest fires in California engulfed Los Angeles in smoke and PM2.5 soot, but again deaths did not increase. In fact, they were below normal as soot levels soared during the fires.

 

EPA has not proposed a plausible medical explanation to support its claim that super-tiny particles cause multiple diseases and kill people by getting into their lungs or bloodstreams. It just counts deaths during arbitrarily chosen intervals of days, and says differences in the number dying in relation to air pollution levels represents “premature” deaths – rather than the fact that more people die on some days than others.

 

People certainly did die during some atmospheric inversions that trapped large quantities of airborne chemicals in urban areas like London in 1952. However those pollutants have been dramatically reduced in America’s air. For example, since 1970 US cars have reduced tailpipe pollutants by 99% and coal-fired power plants have eliminated over 90% of their particulate, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions.

 

EPA thus sponsored 20 years of lab experiments that exposed human test subjects to high air pollution levels. That raises legal, ethical and scientific problems. US laws, the Nuremberg Code, the Helsinki Accords and EPA Rule 1000.17 make it unethical or illegal to conduct toxicity experiments on humans.

 

In addition, researchers failed to advise volunteers that EPA claims the pollution they were going to breathe is toxic, carcinogenic and deadly. Moreover, many of the human guinea pigs were elderly, asthmatics, diabetics, people with heart disease and even children – the very people EPA claims are at greatest risk and most susceptible to getting sick or dying from the pollutants volunteers would breathe.

 

Finally, test subjects were exposed to eight, thirty or even sixty times more particulates per volume of inhaled air – for varying periods of time: up to two hours – than they would breathe outdoors during routine physical activities. And yet, they did not get seriously ill or die. That raises important questions:

 

* If PM2.5 particulates are dangerous or lethal when emitted by factories or vehicles, and there is no safe threshold – how can those same pollutants be harmless to people who were intentionally administered pollution many times higher, and for longer periods, than they would encounter in their daily lives? Why didn’t those test subjects have seizures, develop lung, cardiac or cancer problems, or die?

 

* If they did not, how can EPA say there is no safe level, all PM2.5 particulates are toxic, its regulations are saving countless lives, and regulatory benefits vastly outweigh their multi-billion-dollar annual costs?

 

Simply put, there is no basis for these claims – or for the Obama EPA’s war on fossil fuels and factories.

 

America’s air is healthy and safe. EPA’s PM2.5 emission standards and regulations are clearly based on bald assertions, rank conjecture, epidemiological studies that provide no scientific support for the agency, and human testing that actually proves small particulates pose no toxic or lethal risk to risk to human health, even at levels dozens of time higher than what EPA claims are dangerous or lethal in outdoor air.

 

Any computer models based on these assertions and studies are thus garbage in-garbage out game playing that provide no valid basis for claims about lives saved or regulatory benefits exceeding costs.

 

(A thorough analysis of this untenable situation can be found in JunkScience.com director Steve Milloy’s new book, Scare Pollution: Why and how to fix the EPA, which documents the ways EPA uses deceptive tactics to frighten people into believing the air they breathe is likely to sicken or kill them.)

 

The incoming Trump EPA needs to conduct its own internal review of existing agency PM2.5 claims, documents, emission levels and regulations – and fund an independent review by respected medical experts – to determine whether they are based on honest, replicable science. If they are not, everything based on the fraudulent PM2.5 pollution narrative should be subjected to a total do-over.

 

While all that is being done, EPA should suspend implementation of all policies, guidelines and rules based on the scheme. It must also inform legislators, journalists and citizens about the facts – and clearly and vigorously address inevitable environmentalist objections and denunciations.

 

The new EPA and Congress should also require that all past, current and future researchers make their raw data and methodologies available for outside peer review. They should stop funding activist groups that have engaged in collusive lawsuits or rubberstamped EPA actions, including the American Lung Association. Last, they should fully reform the agency’s supervisory panels, board of scientific counselors and Clean Air Act Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) – and repopulate them with experts who do not have government grant or other conflicts, and will bring integrity and rigor to the scientific process.

 

These steps will help make EPA credible and accountable, and its actions based on solid science.

 

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and other books on the environment.

 

EPA’s next regulatory tsunami

Trillions of dollars in ozone compliance and economic stagnation costs, for fabricated benefits

Paul Driessen          

Looming Environmental Protection Agency ozone regulations personify the Obama administration’s secrecy, collusion, fraud, and disdain for concerns about the effects that its tsunami of regulations is having on the livelihoods, living standards, health and welfare of millions of American families.

Virtually every EPA announcement of new regulations asserts that they will improve human health. Draconian carbon dioxide standards, for example, won’t just prevent climate change, even if rapidly developing countries continue emitting vast volumes of this plant-fertilizing gas. The rules will somehow reduce the spread of ticks and Lyme disease, and protect “our most vulnerable citizens.” It’s hogwash.

But Americans naturally worry about pollution harming children and the poor. That makes it easy for EPA to promulgate regulations based on false assumptions and linkages, black-box computer models, secretive collusion with activist groups, outright deception, and supposedly “scientific” reports whose shady data and methodologies the agency refuses to share with industries, citizens or even Congress.

It was only in May 2012 that EPA decided which US counties met new 2008 ozone standards that cut allowable ground-level ozone levels from 80 parts per billion to 75 ppb. Now EPA wants to slash allowable levels even further: to 70 or even 60 ppb, equivalent to 70 or 60 seconds in 32 years.

The lower limits are essential, it claims, to reduce smog, human respiratory problems and damage to vegetation. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says a 600-page agency staff report strongly recommends this reduction, and her Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee agrees. They all say the lower limits are vital for protecting public health, especially “at-risk populations and life stages.” Her decision will ultimately involve “a scientific judgment” and will “keep people safe,” Ms. McCarthy assures us.

Under terms of a convenient federal court settlement, EPA must issue its proposed new standards by December 1 of this year, and make a final decision by October 2015. The process will be “open and transparent,” with “multiple opportunities” for public hearings and comment throughout, she promised.

EPA has offered little transparency, honesty or opportunity for fair hearings and input by impacted parties thus far, and we should expect none here. But other problems with this proposal are much more serious.

If the 60 ppb standard is adopted, 85% of all US counties would likely become “non-attainment” areas, making it difficult to establish new industrial facilities or expand existing plants. Even in Big Sky, clean-air Wyoming, Teton County could be out of compliance – mostly due to emissions from pine trees!

A Manufacturers’ Alliance/MAPI study calculated that a 60 ppb ozone standard would cost the US economy a whopping $1 trillion per year and kill 7.3 million jobs by 2020. A Louisiana Association of Business and Industry and National Association of Manufacturers study concluded that a 60 ppb rule would penalize the state $189 billion for compliance and $53 billion in lost gross domestic product between 2017 and 2040. That’s $10 billion per year in just one state.

But the standard would save lives, EPA predictably claimed, citing 2009 research directed by University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health Professor Michael Jerrett. The study purportedly tracked 448,000 people and claimed to find a connection between long-term ozone exposure and death.

Other researchers sharply criticized Jerrett’s work. His study made questionable assumptions about ozone concentrations, did not rely on clinical tests, ignored the findings of other studies that found no significant link between ground-level ozone and health effects, and failed to gather critically important information on the subjects’ smoking patterns, they pointed out. When they asked to examine his data, Jerrett refused.

Michael Honeycutt, chief toxicologist for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, says Jerrett and EPA exaggerate health risks from ozone. The Texas Public Policy Foundation told EPA the agency needs to consider “the totality of studies on this issue, rather than giving exclusive weight to a single study,” the foundation emphasized. Unfortunately, EPA almost always focuses on one or two analyses that support its regulatory agenda – and ignores any that might slow or derail its onrushing freight train.

Even worse, those lost jobs and GDP result in major impacts on the lives, livelihoods, liberties, living standards, health, welfare and life spans of millions of Americans. And yet, EPA steadfastly refuses to consider these regulatory impacts: for ozone, carbon dioxide, soot, mercury and other rules.

Then there is the matter of outright deception, collusion and fraud at EPA, via these and other tactics.

One such tactic is sue-and-settle lawsuits. Agitator groups meet with EPA officials behind closed doors and agree on new rules or standards. The agency then conveniently misses a deadline, “forcing” the activists to sue. That leads to a court hearing (from which impacted parties are excluded), and a judgment “forcing” the agency to issue new regulations – and even pay the agitators’ attorney fees! American Lung Association, NRDC, Sierra Club and EPA sue-and-settle collusion resulted in the new ozone proposal.

This clever sue-and-settle tactic was devised by none other than John Beale – the con artist who’s now in prison for bilking taxpayers out of $1 million in salary and travel expenses for his mythical second job as a CIA agent. It defies belief to assume his fraudulent propensities did not extend to his official EPA duties as senior policy advisor with his boss and buddy Robert Brenner, helping Ms. McCarthy and her Office of Air and Radiation develop and implement oppressive regulations. Indeed, his own attorney says he had a “dysfunctional need to engage in excessively reckless, risky behavior” and “manipulate those around him through the fabrication of grandiose narratives.” A US Senate report details the sleazy practice.

As to the “experts” who claim lower ozone limits are vital for protecting public health, there’s this.

The American Lung Association supports the EPA health claims – but neglects to mention that EPA has given the ALA $24.7 million over the past 15 years. Overall, during this period, the ALA received $43 million via 591 federal grants, and Big Green foundations bankrolled it with an additional $76 million. But no one is supposed to question the ALA’s credibility, integrity or support for EPA “science.”

EPA also channels vast sums to its “independent” Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, which likewise rubberstamps the agency’s pollution claims and regulations. Fifteen CASAC members received over $181 million since 2000. CASAC excludes from its ranks industry and other experts who might question EPA findings. Both EPA and CASAC stonewall and slow-walk FOIA requests and deny requests for correction and reconsideration. Even congressional committees get nowhere.

As Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House on Science, Space and Technology Committee, noted in a letter, 16 of the 20 CASAC members who “peer-reviewed” the ozone studies also helped to write the studies. That makes it even less likely that their reviews were “independent.”

That Senate report, The Chains of Environmental Command, also notes that the Obama EPA has been deliberately packed with far-left environmental activists who work with their former Big Green colleagues to shape policy. They give radical groups critical insider access and also funnel millions of taxpayer dollars through grants to their former organizations, often in violation of agency ethics rules.

These arrogant, unelected, unaccountable, deceitful, dictatorial elites think they have a right to impose ozone, carbon dioxide, ObamaCare and other diktats on us, “for our own good.” They are a primary reason American businesses and families are already paying $1.9 trillion per year to comply with mountains of federal regulations – $353 billion of these costs from EPA alone. The damage to jobs, livelihoods, liberties, living standards, health and welfare is incalculable.

The next Congress should review all EPA data, documents and decisions, root out the fraud and collusion, and defund and ultimately reverse all regulations that do not pass muster. The principle is simple: No data, honesty, transparency or integrity – no regulation, and no taxpayer money to impose it.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death, and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: To save the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.

Editor's Note:  In line with this article I thought posting this 2007 "Blast From the Past" would be worthwhile.  Please enjoy $cience Mag Jumps on Global Moneywagon.

The EPA Air Study Saga Continues!

New documents prove falsification in EPA air study; JunkScience renews retraction request

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Steve Milloy | 11 Comments

JunkScience.com has uncovered new documents conclusively proving that EPA researchers materially falsified a September 2011 study published in Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). Continue reading →

Project: Green Foundations

By Rich Kozlovich

As I have stated before, this is to make everyone aware of the amount of information and misinformation that is floating around out there daily.  After this month I will pick the links I wish to comment on to show the impact "The Fourth Branch" of government has on our society.

Agenda 21

farmlandgrab.org | Christchurch New Zealand Land Grab - Agenda 21
The Beautiful Historic City of Christchurch New Zealand is being swindled in a Global Attack ...farmlandgrab.org/post/view/20893

Upcoming meetings: More about Agenda 21 in Lawrence Aug. 13 ...
August 10, 2012 JIssues. Is the U.N.'s Agenda 21 being promoted in the Lawrence community ...americansforprosperity.org/.../upcoming-meetings-more-about...

Project: Clean Air Act

Icicle Seafoods to pay $430K for violating Clean Air Act
Seattle Post Intelligencer
Icicle Seafoods, a Seattle-based fishing and fish-processing company with widespread operations in Alaskan waters, has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $430000 and repair its equipment to resolve violations of the Clean Air Act stemming from leaks of ...

Federal appeals court rules EPA violated Clean Air Act by rejecting Texas air ...
The Republic
AUSTIN, Texas — A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act by rejecting a Texas program for approving air permits. The ruling by a divided three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit ...

 Texas prevails at Fifth Circuit in air case against EPA
Austin American-Statesman (blog)
The 2010 rejection of Texas' flexible permitting program, which applied to refineries, power plants and other industrial sites, went “transgresses the Clean Air Act's delineated boundaries” of the “cooperative relationship” between the EPA and the ...

Chevron's refinery, Richmond's peril
Los Angeles Times
Since at least April 2009, the refinery has been in noncompliance of the Clean Water Act and the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System in every quarter but one. Until July 2010, the refinery had been in "high-priority violation" of Clean Air ...

 Toxic Air Pollution From Power Plants Drops 19 Percent; Congress Threatens ...
ThinkProgress
The Clean Air Act will continue to cut deadly pollution, saving tens of thousands of lives each year. But the coal industry isn't giving up, and Senators will soon have to choose again whether they will stand for Big Polluters or stand with the health ...

US Power Plant Emissions Decline Reflects Clean Energy Transition
SustainableBusiness.com
The economic case for cleaner energy is better than it's ever been, and this report shows that the industry is adapting to stronger Clean Air Act emissions standards, state-driven efficiency and renewable energy incentives and the dynamics of the ...

Navajo President Shelly backs plan for emission reductions at San Juan ...
Farmington Daily Times
President Shelly said he supports the plan that the state of New Mexico proposed in response to the Clean Air Act's Regional Haze Rule. The U.S. EPA granted a 90-day stay before the implementation of the federal rule, which would force the power plant ...

Texas and region
LubbockOnline.com
A federal appeals court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act by rejecting a Texas program for approving air permits. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling Monday concerns the EPA's 2010 rejection of the ...

Here is the latest Texas news from The Associated Press
KRGV
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) A federal appeals court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act by rejecting a Texas program for approving air permits. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling today deals with the EPA's ...

Project: Clean Water Act 

Environmental group intends to sue Henagar wastewater plant
Times-Journal
“Science has proven that a river is only as clean as its tributaries. When looking to clean up the Tennessee River, we're also looking to clean up its tributaries. This facility has had egregious violations of the Clean Water Act.” Riverkeeper also ...

Responsible development will help avoid environmental mistakes of the past
Lexington Herald Leader
In 2006 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sued Lexington for violations of the Clean Water Act. A combination of aged decaying infrastructure and poorly planned development had given us flooding and raw sewage backing up in basements and ...

When Fracking Comes to Town
Morning Star
According to opponents, fracking is possible and profitable only because gas and oil companies are exempt from the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Drinking Water Act, and from Michigan Water Withdrawal Rules. (Source: Don't Frack Michigan: ...

Letter: Some attitudes are morally rotten
Knoxville News Sentinel
(Civil Rights Act) is moral rot? Making sure all eligible people can vote (Voting Rights Act) is moral rot? Cleaning up our air and water (Clean Air and Clean Water Acts) is moral rot? I could go on. All of these programs as well as many more are moral ...

 Flow of Chicago River to reverse again
ChicagoNow (blog)
Now, the EPA is ordering Chicago to comply with the Clean Water Act. Specifically, this means that the water must be suitable for "primary contact", or for kayakers, canoeing, and even swimming. But don't get too excited just yet... Chicago approved ...

Barnegat Bay's declining condition could bring help for restoration, officials ...
Asbury Park Press
LAVALLETTE — Latest findings from a Rutgers University research team show Barnegat Bay's ecological damage is severe enough to declare it legally “impaired” and force more urgent steps under the Clean Water Act, a state senator and a scientist ...

NPDES litigation floodgates swing open
Western Farm Press
The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) asked EPA to investigate whether the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Health (MDPH) violated the Clean Water Act (CWA) when it declared a pest emergency for mosquitos and aerially sprayed ...

 SALE OF THREE BALTIMORE COAL PLANTS RAISES CONCERNS FOR ...
Utility Products
Last night Exelon announced the sale of three coal plants in the Baltimore area to Riverstone Holdings LLC, a private-equity firm whose subsidiary Penn Virginia Resource Partner (NYSE: PVR) was recently sued for violations of the Clean Water Act at 14 ...

Clean Water Act -- 40 Years Later Panel Discussion | Potomac ...
Congressman John Dingell (D-MI), an architect of the Clean Water Act (invited). Panelists include: Chuck Fox, former EPA Special Advisor on the Chesapeake ...

Cox Operating, LLC, Fined for Violating the Clean Water Act. (Release date: 10 August 2012). DALLAS, TX -- The Environmental Protection Agency has fined ...

Project DDT

Rachel Carson Wanted GMOs
Science 2.0 (blog)
She was wrong that DDT would give you cancer if you sprayed it but she was right in believing that the future of agriculture rested solidly on genetic solutions to problems that chemicals were then solving. Why, then, are her intellectual descendants ...

Project: Endangered Species Act

Endangered species designation sought for great whites: Environmental groups ...
San Jose Mercury News
If approved, the designation could lead to greater habitat protections, stronger limits on bycatch and increased funding for studies. "We do a lot of Endangered Species Act requests and it does tend to increase the science around a species," Sakashita ...

Fire damage shuts down sage grouse hunts in Whitehorse Unit
Statesman Journal
Greater sage-grouse are a candidate species for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife usually allows hunters to take up to 5 percent of the sage-grouse population because the restrictive hunting ...

Video: Why The Environmental Protection Agency Is So Important
ThinkProgress
Yes, Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency, created the first Earth Week, and signed the original Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act during his presidency. (For more, check out this remembrance from Climate Central's ...

Colorado: Rare oil-patch plants get critical habitat
Summit County Citizens Voice
The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed protection for the Graham's penstemon under the Endangered Species Act in 2006, after years of advocacy by conservationists. Worried that this might slow down oil and gas drilling or oil shale mining, the Bureau ...

Project: Sustainable Development

No Cause for Worry Over Oil Waste
AllAfrica.com
In the spirit of sustainable development, the Uganda government gave the mantle of managing and coordinating the petroleum sector to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development (MEMD), supported by other relevant departments such as NEMA, ...

United Nations' Panel of Experts
Tempo
I look forward to the panel's recommendations on a global post-2015 agenda with shares responsibilities for all countries and with the fight against poverty and sustainable development at its core,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The Panel of ...
 

What is technology's role in sustainable development?
The Engineer
The right technologies to make development sustainable are already available today – the challenge is deploying them in the right way. In this context the key challenge is to create links between the people with the ideas, those working on the ground ...

 Sustainable community development in Niger Delta: The Andoni-Opobo-Nkoro ...
BusinessDay
The two LGAs of Andoni and Opobo/Nkoro are not left out. LGAs are the basic unit of governance after the community level and thus must buy into the vision of the people and design plans and development projects to meet the needs of the people.

Blue economy for sustainable coastal development (Part 2 of 2)
Jakarta Post
Furthermore, we have to embark on a development paradigm shift, from pursuing insatiable economic growth to a more inclusive and sustainable economic growth. In other words, from now on we have to ensure the effective use of our coasts and oceans and ...

International Funders Shift Investments Toward Sustainable Transportation
Streetsblog Capitol Hill (blog)
If you think the United States is doing a bad job shifting toward sustainable transportation, take a look at the developing world. The places with the most to lose from auto-oriented development are doubling down on it — to the enormous detriment of ...

 Sustainable tourism boon to businesses, travelers and environment
Memphis Commercial Appeal
Volkswagen cited Chattanooga's environmental values in choosing to put a plant there. But new buildings and attractions can add to sustainability, too. In Memphis, the Riverfront Development Corp.'s (RDC) Beale Street Landing, where showboats like the ...

Help save the 'dragon' of Tasik Cini
Malay Mail
THE experiences at the UN Conference for Sustainable Development is still fresh in my mind, especially the call for a balanced and sustainable development which takes into account three key dimensions namely the economic, social and environmental ...

The Drought and the Coming Food Price Bubble
The Real News Network
Timothy A. Wise is the Research Director of the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), Tufts University, and leads its Globalization and Sustainable Development Program. With a background in international development, he specializes in ...

Tackling sachet waste in developing markets
The Guardian
As part of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, we have committed to developing and implementing a sustainable business model for handling our waste sachets by 2015. We have set out to help create a value for this waste product, so that there is an ...

 Redefine breaks ground on new flagship R500m 16 storey sustainable building ...
SA Commercial Prop News
“We are making a statement with 90 Grayston,” says Mike Ruttell, Group Development Manager for Redefine Properties. “This iconic sustainable development represents the first of a number of future property development solutions which will showcase ...

 Sustainable Development Solutions Network — Jeffrey Sachs
On 9 August 2012, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched a new independent global network of research centres, universities and technical insitutions to ...
jeffsachs.org/2012/.../sustainable-development-solutions-netw...

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