EPA's suspect science by John Rafuse

Paul Driessen (CFACT) sent me the following article with this statement and request:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been roundly criticized in recent years for numerous errors of omission and commission, for secret email accounts designed to hide questionable official dealings and activities, and for being increasingly dictatorial in implementing policies that are often rooted in highly “liberal” interpretations of federal laws and scientific research. What many people don’t realize is that problems like these have plagued the agency since its inception in 1970.

Energy and environmental consultant John Rafuse presents some of the unsavory details in this fascinating article. Thank you for posting it, quoting from it, and forwarding it to your friends and colleagues.

EPA’s suspect science  

Its practices have defiled scientific integrity, but proposed corrections bring shock and defiance.

John Rafuse

President Trump’s budget guidance sought to cut $1.6 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency’s $8.1 billion expectation. Shrieks of looming Armageddon prompted Congress to fund EPA in full until September 2017, when the battle will be joined again.

Then EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said he would prioritize Superfund cleanups based on toxicity, health-impact and other factors. The ensuing caterwauling suggested that EPA had no priorities since Bill Ruckelshaus (EPA’s first administrator, 1970-1975). But consider some standard EPA practices:    

1. EPA advocates claim the US is unhealthy and dirty. They won’t admit that US water quality has improved dramatically since 1970. They deny that factories, cars and power plants are far more efficient and clean. They ignore that, while most nations continue to cut down forest habitats for fuel, the Lower 48 states have more forest coverage than when the Pilgrims landed in 1620.

They never mention that the US did not sign the 1992 Kyoto Accord, nor that it is the only nation to meet its Kyoto targets. Is it ignorance? malignance? eco-professional propaganda? Yes, yes, and yes.

The United States is one of the cleanest, healthiest nations on earth. Our progress will continue because we rejected the Paris Accord and thus will not cripple our economy, jobs or environmental progress. Other nations must work hard to catch us. They may work hard, but they won’t catch up, and they’ll blame us.     

2. Eco-militants at EPA tricked the Supreme Court into letting it label plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide a pollutant. Meanwhile, professional enviros demand “zero tolerance” for pollutants – because they claim “any dose kills.”

However, CO2 is plant fertilizer, the trace gas that makes plant and animal life possible on our planet. Atmospheric CO2 is just 400 parts per million (ppm), or 0.04% of the air we breathe, compared to 21% oxygen and almost 1% argon.  Classrooms average 1,000 to 2,000 ppm; US nuclear submarines average 5,000 to 8,000ppm. We inhale 400 ppm and exhale 40,000 to 50,000 ppm.

That means 100 to 125 times the “fatal dose” of a “zero tolerance pollutant” is always in our lungs.  We don’t die, because CO2 is not a pollutant and because real scientists know that dosage, not microscopic presence, is the key.

EPA keeps cheating, but dosage always determines poisonous impact. In fact, EPA experiments illegally exposed human test subjects to 10 and even 30 times the levels of fine soot particles that EPA claims are lethal. No one got sick or died, and yet EPA continues its “standards” and lies.

3. DDT saved millions in World War II from death by typhus. By 1970 DDT had helped wipe out malaria in 99 countries, including the USA. Administrator Ruckelshaus appointed a scientific committee to examine claims that the pesticide caused cancer and other problems. The experts said it did not, because dosage determines effect.

Ruckelshaus ignored them, never attended a minute of their hearings, never read a page of their extensive report. He simply banned DDT in 1972.  He later said he had a “political problem” due to Rachel Carson’s misinformed book Silent Spring and pressure from the Environmental Defense Fund, and he needed to “fix it.”

Other nations followed suit, banning DDT. Since 1972, some 40 million children and parents have needlessly died from malaria. Today DDT is partially reinstated, but P.A. Offit, Pandora’s Lab, Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong, quotes Michael Crichton, MD: “Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in twentieth century America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die, and we didn’t give a damn.” 

4. EPA knowingly relies on fake science. Data from point-source “pollution” are used to “project” thousands of asthma cases and cancer deaths. EPA “validates” the analyses by “assuming” that each projected death and illness happened to someone who had spent every second of a 70-year life at the point-source – within 6 feet of the measurement point. But Newton’s Law of Inverse Squares proves that dosage wanes by the inverse square of the distance; 5 units of distance cuts dosage impact to 1/25 what it was at its source. At 10 units, the impact is 1/100th.  EPA’s analysis is a dishonest, purposeful scam.

The 70-year/6-foot/no-movement assumption makes a joke of all its calculations and projections. EPA has relied on that scam for decades to “prove” need for a non-scientific regulatory remedy for every newly invented threat. 

5. EPA colludes with professional environmentalists to “fix” “inadequate” draft regulations. EPA then “settles” cases, pays co-conspirators’ fees with taxpayer funds and wins excessive regulatory powers it sought from the beginning. Parties who oppose the decision never get a day in court, and the “sue-and-settle” cases ensure high costs but provide no health or environmental benefits.

6. EPA covers up crimes. As the auto industry cratered since 2000, Flint, Michigan has lost 25,000 citizens and become poorer and more minority. The 2010 Census Report concluded that 42% of the population was in a “level of poverty and health … not comparable to other geographic levels of these estimates.” Yet EPA (and state and local authorities) did nothing to protect them. What happened?

The 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act delegated compliance to EPA, which typically approves a State Compliance Plan, re-delegates authority, and oversees State and local enforcement. Flint’s drinking water has been lead-poisoned for three years – ever since state and local officials switched water sources to save money with no hearings, approvals or notifications to EPA or affected citizens.

Drinking, tasting and smelling nauseating newly-brown water alerted residents to potential dangers. An EPA expert tested the water in 2014 and wrote repeated warnings to Agency officials. A February 2015 Detroit News report said EPA’s Regional Administrator knew the facts but claimed her “hands were tied.”

Then-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy forbade the staff expert from meeting, writing or speaking about the issue, and reassigned him.  Thus the two most senior and directly responsible EPA officials “washed their hands” of the problem.

But Flint Medical Center tested for lead in the water and sounded the alarm. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added powerful voices. Flint’s mayor and Michigan’s governor took heat until the state’s attorney general initially charged five Flint and Michigan officials with wrongful issuance of permits, and tampering, altering and falsifying evidence. That has now expanded to more than 50 criminal charges against 15 state officials; including one of involuntary manslaughter (an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease took 12 lives).   

The two “clean-handed” EPA officials kept mum until June 12, 2016, when Gina McCarthy wrote to Michigan’s governor and Flint’s mayor. Citing “major challenges” and her “long-term” clean water goal, she blamed state and local staffs and old and (newly) over-large piping. She said EPA had no money to help. Will Michigan’s AG indict EPA officials involved in the EPA cover-ups?  That would be logical, but don’t bet on it. 

McCarthy’s was a nasty letter from a culpable official. Later in 2016, Congress voted $110 million to repair Flint’s drinking water, no thanks to EPA. The work will go on for years as Flint residents get bottled water from EPA and the state. 

President Trump’s budget guidance exposed decades-old EPA abuses. The evidence exposes EPA’s lack of mission, commitment and integrity. If EPA would use honest, evidence-based science to protect the nation’s health, it would be a welcome and long overdue change – perhaps a miracle. What’s your bet?

Independent consultant John Rafuse worked for government agencies, a think-tank and an international oil and gas company on energy, trade, environmental, regulatory and national security issues.    

American Carbon Trading Exchange Dies

The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), which received start-up funding from the socialist Joyce Foundation on whose board Barack Obama served, announced on 21 October that it was ending its carbon trading mission.  The CCX has provided voluntary, but legally binding, greenhouse gas reduction pledges or offsetting carbon emissions permits.  CCX was an investment of Al Gore's Generation Investment Management and the political clout machine at Goldman Sachs.  While voluntary at first, the CCX was anticipating the massive theft of wealth from Americans upon the Waxman-Markey cap and trade law being passed to make carbon trading mandatory.  Steve Milloy noted on 6 November that the media has completely ignored the failure of the CCX, which they had done so much to promote.

The failure of the Copenhagan meeting to set up a greenhouse gas emissions reduction commitment to follow the Kyoto Protocol which is ending in 2012, the refusal of the U.S. Senate to pass cap and trade legislation, the Great Socialist Recession, ClimateGate, the scientific failure of the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis, the surge of the Tea Party movement, and the upcoming Republican control of the House of Representatives, a renewed balance in the Senate, and the Republican control of most state governorships and legislatures have finally slowed down the momentum of the wrongheaded crusade against the use of fossil fuels with requirements to substitute unreliable and very expensive so-called "sustainable energy."

GM, Ford, IBM, American Electric Power, Chevron Oil, Intel, Bank of America, GE, BP, Alcoa, Caterpillar, and FP&L are among many companies who have bought carbon offsets or pledged reductions instead of investing in new equipment or keeping long-time employee Joe on during the Great Socialist Recession.  Not to be too cavalier, there are some cases in which energy use reductions actually did make economic sense, though buying carbon emissions credits never did.  Overall, political and environmental pressures certainly did distort the market and did cause many Joe's to be let go and other young David's to never be offered their first job.  GM, American Electric Power, and Chevron were buying trees in Brazil in order to get emissions credits.  Each of these companies has laid people off during the recession, while they played the ruse of being environmentally conscious.  Indeed, there are many claims that two-thirds of the carbon emissions reductions claimed on the exchanges are bogus, but they still cost money to play the game.

The value of Greenhouse Gas Emissions credits traded in the U.S. dropped 47% to $387.4 in 2009.  The volume of trades of CO2 tons fell by 26% to 93.7 million tons, though that was a volume 39% higher than in 2007.  The fact the value of trades fell more than did the volume shows that the value of a ton of CO2 was lower in 2009.  It is now much lower in 2010!  The HSBC climate index follows companies making at least 10% of their total revenues from selling goods and services related to climate change and dropped CCX and Trading Emissions from their index when the value of their market capitalization fell below $400 million as the share prices of these firms fell 37% between 1 September 2009 and 19 March 2010.  The CCX was bought by the IntercontinentalExchange Inc. or ICE, along with the European Climate Exchange and the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange, in April 2010 for about $634.5 million.  The European Climate Exchange is still bolstered by mandatory carbon trading requirements due to the Kyoto Protocol.


While mandatory carbon trading requirements do not have a national basis in the U.S., they are required in some regions of the U.S.  The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states has Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine as members.  This group of masochistic states is committed to the following state economy mass destruction goals for the region:

2009 - 2014, 188,076,976 short tons of CO2 Emissions, 0% growth
2015, 183,375,052 tons, 2.50% reduction, 1 and one-third years of the output of the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii, of one many tens of thousands of volcanic vents on land and underwater
2016, 178,673,127 tons, 2.56% reduction
2017, 173,971,203 tons, 2.63% reduction
2018, 169,269,278 tons, 2.70% reduction

Now using energy efficiently is wise, but the entire purpose of the state mandates is to drive companies to make energy use reductions that do not make economic sense.  This Northeast - Middle Atlantic alliance is not the only regional alliance requiring member states or provinces to commit Hari Kari.  The Western Climate Initiative is another.  A wise investor would bet against energy-intensive companies with major operations in either set of states.  Those in the Western Climate Initiative are California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Montana, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec.  These state based requirements are providing business for the European Climate Exchange.

Kristel Dorion who has worked for 10 years on carbon offset projects under the United Nation's Clean Development Mechanisms program says that investors are looking elsewhere than carbon offsets.  It is about time.

The Collapsing Carbon Market

The Kyoto Protocol required developed countries which did not meet their carbon reduction quotas to purchase credits from clean energy projects in the developing world.  This created a carbon trading market, which meant that many people, including Al Gore, were able to make a great deal of money from the alarm caused by the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.  Those making such money became a powerful lobby with a strong incentive to further feed the man-made global warming frenzy.

The Guardian of the UK has now reported that the carbon market is no longer growing and may soon collapse.  The failure of the Copenhagen Conference to set new emissions standards to take effect when the Kyoto Protocol reduction schedule ends in 2012, is causing many banks to stop lending money for carbon-emissions offset projects.  These banks are not expanding their workforce on the carbon desks as anticipated and some people are already being released.  The financiers backing one large clean energy project in the developing world backed out this month.  The recession also contributed to there being lower emissions and hence less overshoot on quotas needing to be offset.  The price of carbon offsets has fallen, especially in the U.S. and Australia where attempts to pass carbon cap and trade legislation have failed.

The weakness of the carbon trading market, combined with the realization by many that the science behind the theory of catastrophic man-made global warming was fraudulent, is and will further result in a great weakening of the forces pushing for catastrophic energy use restrictions and the attendant destruction of the economies of the nations of the developed world. 

Driessen -- Second thoughts on warming

Paul Driessen, senior policy adviser for the Congress of Racial Equality and its Stop the War on the Poor campaign and author of "Eco-Imperialism: Green Power -- Black death," wrote an interesting commentary in today's Washington Times called "Second thoughts on warming." He opens with:

President-elect Barack Obama wants to phase out coal-based electricity generation, switch to renewable energy and follow Europe's lead on climate change. That could prove difficult.

Coal generates half of all U.S. electricity. Wind provides less than 2 percent of all electricity and cannot be relied on when it's needed. Europe's lead can't even be defined, much less followed.

He describes the "leadership" offered by Europe:

• The Kyoto Protocol called for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut by 7% below 1990 levels by 2012. At this time, Spain is 37% above that level, while Austria is 30%, Denmark 19%, and Portugal 17% above the target level. The EU changed its goal in 2007 to an emission cut of 20% by 2020. Now many countries believe that too ambitious.
• German Chancellor Merkel promised to eliminate coal and nuclear power in 2006. Now she wants more nuclear and coal power plants and wants to reduce emissions restrictions on chemical, steel, manufacturing, cement, and auto industries.
• Austria and Italy also want emissions requirements eased.
• The Eastern Bloc nations all want exemptions from emissions restrictions. They depend upon coal for 90% of their electricity and believe Communism held their economies back for 50 years and now they want to catch up.
• Britain finds 5.5 million households living in "fuel poverty" due to climate taxes and high energy prices. Many factories are threatening to shut down for the winter.

Driessen says "Following these examples makes sense. But that's probably not what Mr. Obama or environmentalists have in mind." You can bet that they have no interest in a rational plan.

• China and India are rapidly building coal-fired electric power plants and are rightfully mostly concerned with combating poverty. They figure they can better respond to any warming that might occur later if they are not so poor and technologically backward.
• African nations are putting their priorities rightfully on having affordable and reliable energy, safe water, modern hospitals, refrigeration, and the reduction of lung and intestinal diseases. Wind and solar power are not high priorities.

Meanwhile in the U.S.:

• Emissions are 23% above the Kyoto Protocol requirement, had we signed it.
• But, the growth of our emissions since 2000 is only 0.2% per year.
• Al Gore flies only private jets, owns a fancy houseboat, and uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans use in total in a year.
• Warner-Lieberman cap-and-trade will cost more than $7 trillion. Now, many Democrats want a cap-and-trade law which will cost much more.
• Hydrocarbons provide 85% of U.S. energy [and will all be hit hard by cap-and-trade, causing hydrocarbon energy cost to soar. All other energy costs will also soar due to increased demand for these other forms of energy.]
  
• The EPA wants to micromanage our complete energy system and hence the entire economy.
• Even without further new restrictions, we face brownouts and blackouts at unprecedented levels in 2009.

Obama will not be following Europe's lead on this. HE, Pelosi, and Democrat Congressional Socialists will be setting new records in insanity. When winter comes and we cannot afford to heat water so we can take showers, then we will be following BO and the French. This odor emissions problem will not be addressed with anything like the urgency which should attend to it. The good news is that we will be keeping our buildings so cold that we will perspire less. Chatter, chatter, shudder, shudder......The new U.S. energy plan is plenty of covers and some serious bundling. Uhhh... you had better have some company under those covers to share body heat with.

The Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming

Internet Al Gore told the climate jamboree held last year in Bali, "My own country the United States is principally responsible for obstructing progress here." Let us examine what the rest of the world has actually done and what the US has done between the signing in Kyoto in 1997 and 2004.

• Non-water vapor greenhouse gas emissions world-wide increased 18%.

• Treaty signing nations increased emissions 21.1%.

• Emissions from non-signing nations increased 10%.

• Emissions of the European Union nations increased 8.0%.

• Emissions in the US increased 6.6%.

If we look at the data between 2000 and 2004, we see a trend looking forward for the US vs. the European Union:

• Emissions increase in the European Union of 5.8%.

• Emissions increase in the US of 1.7%.

The much smaller increases in the US occurred despite a larger population growth and faster economic growth.

Apparently, the Kyoto Protocol, which actually will do very little to change the world's temperature, serves as a holier-than-thou cover for nations who are adding to greenhouse gas emissions much faster than the US is. Just about everywhere you look in this Global Warming Scare, you find dishonesty. You also find that it is a tool used to belittle the US and for other nations and the UN to try to gain control of the US.