By Steve Milloy
March 1, 2011, Investor’s Business Daily
It looks as though President Obama may have decided that getting re-elected in 2012 is more important than saving the planet from the much-dreaded global warming. Continue reading Is Obama With Eye On ’12 Mulling An EPA Rollback?
The coincidence of:
may be signs that Obama is preparing his base for the impending news that the EPA will be delaying implementation of its greenhouse gas regulations by two years.
And, no, a two year delay is most certainly not good enough — it’s just a ploy to help Obama skate through the 2012 election.
A new study in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension reports that consumption of one sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) per day increased the systolic/diastolic blood pressure among study subjects (N=2,696) on average by +1.1 mm Hg/+0.4 mm Hg. The researchers conclude that SSBs are directly associated with blood pressure. We conclude that this study is meaningless.
Even accepting the study results at face value, they are of no clinical significance. The average BP in the one-SSB-per-day-group was 119.5/74.0 — under the ideal BP of 120/80. In the more-than-one-SSB-per-day group, mean BP was 122.5/75.5 — again, perfectly normal. Moreover, the study did not link SSB consumption with any clinical health effects.
You’ve heard of Coke Zero; this study is Hypertension Zero.
Greenwire reports that Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown has complained to President Obama about the threat to jobs posed by EPA greenhouse gas regulation. Brown’s letter to Obama stated,
“…Without careful consideration, the unintended consequences of imprudent regulation could ultimately undermine our shared objectives of reducing GHG emissions and spurring economic growth… It is disconcerting that, to my knowledge, the EPA has neither a plan in place nor the authority to provide these protections to U.S. manufacturing, a sector of the economy critical to the continued economic recovery of my state and so many others…”
If enough Senate Democrats get antsy about the EPA regs, Obama will be forced to give up his dream of advancing socialism through greenhouse gas regulation.
Click for Brown’s media release and letter.
Click here for the greens’ meltdown.
In “Barack Obama may be forced to delay US climate action” (The Guardian, Feb. 28), prominent green activist Eileen Claussen is quoted as saying,
“If I was predicting, I would say that [Obama] might sign a delay provision, to delay the EPA effort for two years or something like that. It probably depends on the particular circumstances… I would bet that if it was a delay, and it was part of a money bill that was really important, he would sign it.”
If Obama really is considering this move, it would merely be a ploy to help get him past the 2012 election, after which time, his EPA could then get back to regulating greenhouse gases.
Republicans ought not fall for a trick that doesn’t help our economy (a two-year delay simply extends energy sector uncertainty), and possibly helps Obama’s re-election chances.
“Together we can have a blockbuster impact on the world,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon tells Hollywood heavyweights at a forum on global climate change, reports the Los Angeles Times.
The short-term spending bill released Friday by House Republicans does not include language to block funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rules or slash the agency’s budget. Andrew Restuccia, E2 Wire
We’ve all heard of giving the mythical 110% in terms of effort. Now DelawareOnline.com reporter Jeff Montgomery writes about a hazardous waste site in Delaware that is way more than guaranteed to give a visitor cancer. Continue reading Delaware waste site: 36,000% chance of cancer?
About the PCBs-in-schools scare, the NY Daily News opined:
Overzealous enforcers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s New York regional office have whipped parents into a frenzy and are threatening to force the city into spending untold millions on a crash cleanup. They need to back off… Only recently did the EPA come up with what the agency considers an acceptable level of PCBs in the air of a classroom. It defines an “elevated level” of the chemical as anything more than 300 nanograms per cubic meter of air – an extremely conservative guideline that leaves a huge margin of error. By the agency’s own math, it’s 300 times less than the amount that would give a child a 1-in-10,000 chance of suffering harm even after long-term exposure.
Even the media can debunk a needless $700 million clean-up in cash-strapped times.
About the recent controversy concerning municipal water fluoridation, this Fort Smith Times Record editorial hits the nail on the head:
“In our neck of the woods, fluoride overdose is largely limited to children who eat large amounts of toothpaste.”
Fluoridation hasn’t failed us; parents have failed their children.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Evelyn Theiss says CSPI has “educated Americans for 40 years.” We say CSPI, not food, should be labeled as hazardous to health. Continue reading CSPI: 40 years of food libeling
EPA far outdistances the Department of Labor (51% to 8%) in this American Enterprise Institute survey of business complaints about regulatory agencies.