Does Nitrogen Dioxide Cause Asthma in Children?

The Hill -- Equilibrium/Stability, an environmental report put out by The Hill, makes the following claims:

The burden of pollution falls particularly hard on children, according to another Lancet study, which found that the pollutant nitrogen dioxide, or NO2 — a common byproduct of burning fossil fuels in cars and power plants ­­– has led to almost 2 million additional cases of childhood asthma.

The link in the quote is to the Medical press and an article by George Washington University which claims after a picture of smokestacks billowing what appears to be horrible pollutants, but may well be nothing but water vapor, especially given the lighting conditions:

Nearly 2 million new cases of pediatric asthma every year may be caused by a traffic-related air pollutant, a problem particularly important in big cities around the world, according to a new study published today. The study is the first to estimate the burden of pediatric asthma cases caused by this pollutant in more than 13,000 cities from Los Angeles to Mumbai.

"Our study found that nitrogen dioxide puts children at risk of developing asthma and the problem is especially acute in urban areas," Susan Anenberg, a co-lead author of the article and a professor of environmental and occupational health at the George Washington University, said. "The findings suggest that clean air must be a critical part of strategies aimed at keeping children healthy."

Examining the link in this last quote, we go to the paper in The Lancet entitled Long-term trends in urban NO2 concentrations and associated paediatric asthma incidence: estimates from global datasets.  What do we find here?

NO₂ itself has been associated with adverse health outcomes including asthma exacerbation.  Epidemiological studies have also found associations between transportation-related air pollutants and new onset asthma in children.  Toxicological and gene environment research indicates that transportation-related air pollutants cause airway inflammation and remodelling due to oxidative stress, resulting in asthma development in some individuals.  Epidemiological studies are generally consistent in their finding that NO₂ is significantly associated with paediatric asthma incidence, whereas the evidence for other transportation-related air pollutants (eg, PM_2·5) is more mixed.  Although the putative agent causing asthma in the traffic-related air pollution mixture is unknown, NO₂ could serve as a surrogate for other pollutants causing observed health effects.

I added the bold in each of the above quotes to emphasize the slippery impression that nitrogen dioxide is a cause of childhood asthma.  The first article in The Hill -- Equilibrium/Stability implies that it is a cause of childhood asthma.  The second article says it may be a cause in one paragraph and then says it puts children at risk of developing asthma, which means that it is a cause of asthma.  The Lancet paper implies that NO2 is somehow "associated" with asthma exacerbation, but then says that the agent causing asthma in traffic-related air pollution is unknown.  Nonetheless, the gist of the paper is that NO2 causes 2 million additional cases of childhood asthma.

The CDC still says that the cause of childhood asthma is unknown. It says:

While we don’t know what causes asthma, we do know how to prevent asthma attacks or at least make them less severe.

The bottom line is that we do not know that NO2 is causing asthma.  But, the radical environmentalists and the proponents of the failed catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis very much want to create the impression that this product of carbon-based fuel combustion is poisoning children.  The game is a parallel to the darkening of water vapor emissions from smokestacks to make them look like evil pollutants.  It is like the construction of a case against coal-fired power plants based on their mercury emissions that I blew out of the water years ago on this blog.

There are far too many people politicizing science and, in the process, falsifying science.

On Mercury from coal-fired power plants, see:

Evaluating the Mercury Emissions Danger from Coal-Fired Power Plants

The EPA's Newest Environmental Vendetta Against Coal

Coal-Fired Power Plants Produce Insignificant Mercury

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.    

Oppose the Senate Renewable Electricity Standard

The Senate is considering the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) which will mandate an increase in wind and solar power to 15% of all electric power by 2021.  This is similar to the requirement of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill that passed the House in June 2009, which was called the American Clean Energy Leadership Act (ACELA).  Utilities will be forced to make huge investments in these uneconomic means of producing electricity and users will have to pay higher rates for their electricity.  This is a regressive tax with no rational benefits.

The fools backing this bill say it will provide "clean electricity", but laws already require scrubbers to clean the real pollutants from power plants.  As we all know here, CO2 is not a pollutant.  It is great plant food.  It is not causing global warming, let alone catastrophic global warming.  Finally, forcing utilities to invest in expensive alternative energy projects simply takes money from more productive efforts and transfers it to nonsense.  The net effect is a slowdown in growth of the economy and a failure to produce as many jobs as a free economy would.

Of course, this is so foolish, it is hard to believe that many of its backers do not realize this.  It is also a great way to get the alternative energy or renewable energy companies to give a politician some very large campaign contributions.  We know of many cases in which Senators knowingly do the wrong thing to gain money.  Our money.  Our response:  Throw the bums out who back this in November, whether they are running for re-election in 2010, 2012, or 2014.  Remember them as either fools or evil people, neither of whom belong in OUR Senate.

Obama Government Declares The People Original Polluters

Yesterday, Obama's EPA declared CO2 a pollutant gas.  This allows Obama to regulate CO2 emissions under the draconian Clean Air Act.

But, take note that the People breathe out CO2 as an act of life.  Thus, the sovereign People who instituted government to protect their sovereign rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are now sanctioning a government of elitists who can look down their noses at the People for yet another reason.  No doubt these elitists already consider the People to be Original Sinners, who cling to their religion and guns and ignorance.  But now, they can also be perfectly politically correct in terming the People Original Polluters!

Yes, the elitists are also polluters, but in their minds, they have offsetting social value.  This is why it is perfectly fine for Al Gore to jet around the world giving speeches on man's destroying the world because he uses too much fossil fuel energy.  But Al Gore's use of jet fuel energy is OK.  He is doing mankind a service and has earned his CO2 emissions rights!  But have most of the rest of us?  Well, according to many environmentalists, there are already too many people.  They actually talk about the desirability of getting rid of some of us.  So now they can just make an assessment of our social value and weigh that against the fact that each of us is a polluter by virtue of breathing.  Is that social value great enough to justify the pollution costs of each of us breathing?

There is a very interesting synergy now with the health care reform plan.  The Democrats know very well that their plan is going to require massive rationing of health care.  They know there are not enough doctors to go around, so many of us will be forced to take on nurses and nurse practitioners as primary care givers.  They know there will never be enough tax money to cover all of the expenses.  Indeed, the incoming Medicare tax money will fall below the outgo expenses as early as 2013.  Cutbacks in care are a given.  Some will just have to be allowed to die because their care will be too expensive.  But, the health care legislation pussy foots around the issue of who will be given care and who will not.  They want this legislation passed, so they will have to smuggle in the means to cull the population of the weak and the non-contributors.  They will want to preserve the right-minded, no make that the left-minded, elitists, but let the mere People who cling to their guns and their religion go.  But how can they do this?  Don't most Americans still think every life or nearly every life has considerable value?

But just as the regulation of CO2 was never envisioned when the Clean Air Act was passed, its future use in solving the health care funding and rationing problem is not now envisioned.  Well, at least not until this outcast of the Ivy League educated elite realized that it is as of today politically correct to measure the harm of each person's breathing CO2 emissions against their social value.  If that social value, by the standards of the socialist elitists is not sufficiently high, then the medical care plug can be pulled.  They have a civic duty, a duty even to Mother Earth, to pull the plug on any nasty polluter who cannot pay for the right to emit CO2 with a valid permit granted by a government panel of experts using EPA provided pollution guidelines, Department of Labor guidelines for service value, and medical experts estimates of the cost of medical care.

If medical care is needed, it is denied if the harm of breathing out CO2 exceeds the social value.  Let us suppose the social value exceeds the harm of breathing.  Then guidelines have to establish how the harm of medical costs is added to the harm of breathing and that sum must not be higher than the person's social value as perceived by an "objective" government socialist minion elitist panel.  The government now has a great means to lower medical expenditures, since every penny of cost assigned to those who pollute by breathing is  pennies saved in medical costs.

Let us suppose the government says it cannot afford to spend more than $27,000 a year to extend a life by a year.  Lots of people will be very upset that Granny is only worth $27,000 per year to our government.  But, suppose the government tells us that Granny is worth $50,000 per year, but as a polluter by breathing, she costs us $23,000 a year.  Now, they can allow Granny to die and avoid spending $50,000 a year to keep her alive, while claiming she is worth $50,000 per year to them.  All those who care about Granny will say, "Oh yeah, I can understand why Granny's health care is rationed at $50,000 a year.  If she costs more than that, it is OK to pull the plug on Granny."  So now, the government never actually has to spend more than $27,000 a year to extend Granny's life by a year, but they can tell the stupid People that Granny is so important to them that she is worth $50,000 a year!

This is the ultimate win-win situation.  Look at all the special interests you can make happy and beholden to you, the politician:

• The caring people who think everyone must have medical insurance coverage.
• The labor unions controlling the Dept. of Labor who assess everyone's social value.  People will be crazy to volunteer for labor union sanctioned projects to build up their social value quotient.
  
• Hack doctors who want a government position free from medical malpractice suits.
• Those who want to cull the population of excessive numbers of people in the name of the environment and climate tuning.
• The taxpayers who cannot otherwise afford government-run health care.
• All those who think Granny is worth $50,000 a year, but would be offended to hear that she was really only worth $27,000 a year.

So Obama can now not only impress the socialist leaders of other countries at Copenhagen by telling them that he had the EPA declare CO2 a pollutant, but he can also tell them he feels so strongly about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and the environment that he is also committing to sacrificing, say, 1,000,000 additional Grannies a year.  Then he can pose solemnly and ask, "How many of your Grannies will each of your countries contribute to the cause of fighting AGW a year?"

Yes, it is now clear that Grannycide is the only way to go if you are environmentally conscious!  Where is your commitment?

EPA Energy Restrictions and Copenhagen

The Democrat Senate has put off carbon cap and trade legislation, according to Harry Reid, until the Spring.  This is too late for Obama to make a splash at Copenhagen.  So, he will have the EPA claim that CO2 is a pollutant and have the EPA put severe restrictions on the use of energy in the US.  This is the "operationally significant" energy use restriction Obama has been talking about.  He has made some kind of agreement with China, it appears to some, and he and China will announce some restrictions at Copenhagen.

Will we all have to prepare for rolling blackouts?  Or, will we be denied the use of our cars on Saturdays?  Or will we simply throw more people into the ranks of the unemployed as those businesses which Obama does not like are shutdown?  Don't you just love this change and the transformation of America, People?  It is coming.  If Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their cadres of comrades have their way, this will not be America for long.  After all, if CO2 is a pollutant, why should the sovereign rights of the individual be of any significance at all?

Of course, the socialists will push ahead with all of this despite the unraveling of the claimed scientific evidence for catastrophic man-made global warming.  This will only prove that the need for the mandate to control the People by controlling their energy use drove the so-called "science,", not the other way around.  How revealing!

Probable Massive Exposure of Global Warming Alarmist Fraud

A 62 megabytes zipped file which unpacks to yield about 156 megabytes of e-mail correspondence and computer code from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit in East Anglia, the UK, whose data was the primary basis for the UN IPCC reports, including the last one of 2007, has been made public by a hacker or a whistleblower.  This information appears to be shedding a lot of light on a conspiracy to mislead other scientists and the public into believing in man-made catastrophic global warming.  The e-mail correspondence discusses withholding the original data from review by skeptics and destroying it if need be to do so, control over editors at major scientific journals so only global warming alarmists would be published, cabal control over manuscript reviewers, celebration of the death of a global warming skeptic, and how to skew data to make the warming of the late 20th Century look more alarming and to minimize the lack of warming in this century.

This data is being discussed at Climate Audit and Watts Up With That and many other websites.  I have long claimed the science of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming was bad.  The mystery was always how had such bad science managed to hijack so many scientific journals, public policy, and the media.  The answer appeared to be that it was always mostly about meeting the socialist and internationalist agendas for power and broad control of all of the People of this Earth.  This correspondence seems to make it clear that these "scientists" really did have an agenda they held more important than science.

There are at least two major effects to be expected from this.  First, it should prove much more difficult for the Democrat Congress to pass the carbon cap and trade legislation in the Senate and for the two houses to come to agreement on a final bill.  It should be harder for the EPA to move forward with its stupid claim that CO2 is a pollutant and invoke the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act to restrict its emission.  Corollary to these, it should be much harder for the US to submit to any treaty or agreement at the upcoming Copenhagen meeting, though I expect Obama will try still to find every way he can to restrict fossil fuel use in America.  This will help tremendously in averting a disaster to our economy, many lost jobs, minimize the arguments for green energy subsidies, and the need to make major changes in our lifestyles.

The second major effect is that science itself will be given a very black eye, despite the heroic efforts of some scientists to combat this bad science and reveal it for the nonsense it was.  The People will be less likely to listen to scientists in the future and will not accept their authority so readily.  This is both good and bad.  I used to think it was principally bad, but now I am seeing this as much more of a mixed bag.  The scientific method is still as important as always and I want the People to understand that.  These scientists were evil because they subverted scientific thinking.  They are to be condemned because they claimed an unwarranted authority and argued from authority to browbeat the public into believing them and following them.  It is very important that the People understand that it is always dangerous to submit their minds to simply accepting the word of authorities.  There is no real option but to think and think very hard yourself, unless you wish always or more often than not, to be hoodwinked.

There is nothing really different about science than politics with respect to the unwary being hoodwinked if they do not use their own minds to critically evaluate for themselves the truth of everything they are told.  There is no substitute for thinking for yourself.  It may be more common for politicians to take advantage of those who do not think for themselves than it is for scientists to do so, but we should learn here that there are plenty of people in any profession who will argue from authority to scam the gullible.

Obama Gives EPA Mission to Limit Plant Growth

On 30 September 2009, the Obama administration ordered that action be taken to impede and block large sources of highly beneficial plant food. Increased atmospheric CO2 is known scientifically to contribute very little to greenhouse gas warming, but it contributes greatly to plant growth, which in a cooling, highly populated Earth, is critical for our future food supply, as well as that for animals. CO2 increases also allow plants to grow better with less water, which in many areas of the world is in short supply for agricultural purposes. Increased atmospheric CO2 also helps to reduce the size of desert areas by encouraging the growth of cooling and earth-holding plants in arid regions. Increased plant growth also results in higher concentrations of oxygen in the atmosphere, which is beneficial to humans and animals.

Yet, despite the wonderful benefits of increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, the EPA is moving under the foolhardy Obama's pressure to regulate green house gas (GHG) emissions from vehicles under the Clean Air Act by calling them pollutants. The finding that these so-called GHGs are pollutants will result in regulations in a few weeks for tailpipe emissions. The GHG classification as pollutants will require the regulation of stationary emitters, such as coal-fired power plants, gas-fired power plants, oil refineries, and manufacturing facilities. But, the Clean Air Act establishes the quantity of pollutants to be regulated as from 100 to 250 tons per year, depending on how bad the effects of the pollutant. The GHGs to be regulated now are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. If the EPA were to regulate all sites producing total emissions of the sum of these gases of 100 to 250 tons per year, then it has been estimated that the EPA would have to regulate 90% of the American economy. This is not politically feasible, so they are proposing to make the regulation limit 25,000 tons even though there is no provision for such a limit in the Clean Air Act. In other words, this limit actually violates the Clean Air Act.

Facilities emitting more than 25,000 tons per year of the GHGs are responsible for 70% of the GHG emissions, the greatest by far of which is the very wonderful CO2. A coal-fired power plant commonly emits millions of tons of CO2 per year. 250 tons of CO2 would be emitted by a mere 131 railroad cars of coal, or enough for the energy use of 2,200 homes in a year. Under the rule proposed on Wednesday, the EPA will be empowered to monitor 14,000 power plants, oil refineries, and large manufacturing and mining operations.

But, there is an interesting wrinkle here. The EPA has decided to use a provision of the Clean Air Act called the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD), which is a permitting program. Already existing facilities will not be prevented from operating and neither will new ones, provided that new or modernized facilities can get a permit to operate from their respective state agencies. Old facilities, which are often the larger emitters due to less advanced technology use, are grandfathered in. These agencies will have to require them to use the best available control technology, which will be determined on a case by case basis. The PSD provision was set up to protect wilderness areas, national monuments, and seashores. The permitting process now commonly takes 12 to 18 months on this limited basis. These state agencies will have to decide on huge additional numbers of permit cases, which will cause much longer delays.

The EPA will have to specify source categories, develop guidance to help the state agencies understand the GHG emissions for the chosen source types, develop methods to measure and monitor emissions, and develop and understand methods to control CO2 emissions. Once an emission source is classified as a major source of one pollutant, the Clean Air Act provides for a much tighter scrutiny of all emissions from the source.

Now, you may wonder why the Obama administration is choosing this route into a deep and tortuous quagmire to address a non-problem, at least with respect to CO2 emissions. There seem to be many reasons:

• Obama wants to go to the Copenhagen for the U.N. talks on CO2 emissions controls and look like a world leader on the issue.
• The Senate bill introduced by Senators Kerry and Boxer on 30 September may not be passed.
• The EPA regulation of CO2 as a pollutant, may force companies to line up behind a carbon cap and trade bill as the lesser evil.

I am not, however, at all certain of the last bullet. We have to remember that Obama, his cadre, and the Democrat Congressional leadership all think like shakedown artists. This permitting program on a case by case basis is heaven for shakedown purposes. Think of the consequences for them:

• The EPA bureaucracy will grow 100-fold to help the many state agencies perform their jobs on a case by case basis.
• The state agencies will grow by a factor of 10 and provide local politicians with huge numbers of new patronage jobs.
• The regulated facilities will have to spend huge sums on technologies chosen as winners by the many different state agencies, creating many companies dependent for their business upon these state agencies.
• The regulated facilities will have to hire many, many environmental "experts", most of whom are Democrat allies.
• The regulated facilities will hire flocks and flocks of trial lawyers and other lawyers, most of whom are Democrats.
• The permitting process will be very expensive and can be delayed almost indefinitely, creating such uncertainty that no company can attempt it without greasing some politician's and many lobbyist's hands first.
  

In short, this is an ideal mechanism for the ruthless shakedown politicians. This is surely the vast majority of the Obama cohorts and even of the Congressional Democrats. They can count on at least a fair number of Republicans jumping in to share the spoils as well, though perhaps with a somewhat higher degree of decorum. Corruption and special interests will rule our future more than ever.

CO2 is a Pollutant?

The EPA has recently ruled that CO2 is a pollutant. The EPA is now busy making draconian regulations for limiting CO2 emissions due to human activities under the Clean Air Act. Is there any possible rational basis for this?

Aside from the fact that the maximum absorption frequency for infrared radiation is somewhat different for CO2 and water vapor, their activities as greenhouse gases are very similar. Of course, water vapor has an effect which is about 18 to 20 times greater, owing largely to its about 100 times greater concentration in the atmosphere and its ability to form a wider range of dimers, trimers, and other forms to absorb infrared radiation across a broader spectrum than does CO2. So, if CO2 is a pollutant because it is a greenhouse gas, then so is water. We should next expect to see the EPA drawing up restrictions on the human use of water which may add to the water vapor concentration in the atmosphere. I would assume that this will mean no more farm irrigation and no more watering of lawns as a start. The formation of more lakes and ponds by man must also be stopped.

Or perhaps it is a pollutant because it is toxic? Well, if it is, then humans and plant life are at war. For plants, CO2 is absolutely essential if they are to grow. The more CO2 they have, the more oxygen they transpire, which last I knew we humans and other animals need every bit as much as plants need CO2. In fact, before the EPA ruling, all rational minds agreed that plants and animals, including humans, needed one another very badly. Perhaps the EPA now knows better?

And what is the basis for holding that CO2 is toxic? If humans were deprived of oxygen because the CO2 totally crowded it out, maybe it could be regarded as toxic, but then so are nitrogen, argon, and even water, if that is the criteria. As noted above where would our oxygen come from anyway without CO2 as an essential plant input so plants can produce O2?

Scorecard, the pollution information site does not list carbon dioxide as a recognized health hazard. In the last 14,000 years or so, the CO2 concentration has increased greatly as a result of the oceans warming after the last major ice age. Is there any evidence that developmental, neurological, reproductive, or respiratory problems have greatly increased for man during that time and that they are attributable to the omnipresence of CO2 in our environment. How odd it would be if this ubiquitous chemical were harmful to man and yet his evolutionary biochemistry never adjusted to this fact! Or for those of you who do not believe in evolution, how odd that God overlooked this little issue.

The EPA has apparently decided that CO2 is toxic because if there were enough CO2 in the atmosphere, some awful poor computer models used in the 4th IPCC report have suggested that more of Greenland's ice might melt and there might be a 2 inch rise in sea level due to it. From such exaggerations, Al Gore has manufactured a much greater exaggeration of a 20 foot rise in sea level. This is apparently so scary to the EPA that they have ruled that CO2 is a pollutant in what is a very unique definition of a pollutant. So, a possible 2-inch rise in sea levels makes CO2 a pollutant, but does not make water a pollutant! Go figure.

This EPA ruling must clearly be considered absolutely one of the most irrational actions ever taken by an agency assigned to be a scientific watchdog over the health of Americans. There are many other highly irrational rulings by government agencies tasked with our safety ranging through:

• Let's haphazardly store nuclear waste all over the country rather than in a well-researched ($7.7 billion), well-regarded Yucca Mountain facility.
• Let's allow a resurgence of malaria, rather than allow the continued controlled use of DDT.
• Let's avoid the political embarrassment of drug side-effects no matter how many lives might be saved in balance by some prescription drugs authorized by a patient's doctor.
• Let's throw a few 100,000 people in jail for eons so they can be bored senseless and crime gangs can be well-funded, rather than allow citizens to become mellow occasionally on marijuana.
• Let's use a large fraction of our farmland to produce ethanol from corn, so we can pay more for many foods and create no net energy and in no way reduce pollution.
  

I conclude that the EPA has taken the prize for the absolutely most irrational declaration of supposed science and economics ever. This absurdity has been brought on not by science and economics, but by an overwhelming lust for power. The extreme irrationality of the decision can only be reconciled with madness brought on by this lust for power. The result will be rulings massively aimed at undercutting our industrial, mobil, well-housed, and individual-choice society.

This is a clear message that America is now ruled by tyrants and they mean to rule as madmen.