Author: Steve Milloy

EPA’s Smoke-and-Mirrors on Smog and Soot — Part 1

This article begins a series examining the science and economics behind the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposals to tighten air quality standards for ground-level ozone (O3 or smog) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5 or soot). There are two proposed EPA rules at issue:

  1. National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone (NAAQS), proposed in January 2010; and
  2. Clean Air Transport rule, proposed in July 2010.

Starting with the science used by the EPA to justify its regulatory action with respect to smog, the agency proposed to make more stringent the ozone NAAQS as follows:

EPA proposes that the level of the 8-hour primary standard, which was set at 0.075 ppm in the 2008 final rule, should instead be set at a lower level within the range of 0.060 to 0.070 parts per million (ppm), to provide increased protection for children and other ‘‘at risk’’ populations against an array of O3-related adverse health effects that range from decreased lung function and increased respiratory symptoms to serious indicators of respiratory morbidity including emergency department visits and hospital admissions for respiratory causes, and possibly cardiovascular-related morbidity as well as total nonaccidental and cardiopulmonary mortality.

The first field study that the EPA cites in its proposal is a 1998 study by Korrick et al. that the EPA describes as follows:

The results of one large study of hikers (Korrick et al., 1998), which reported outcome measures stratified by several factors (e.g., gender, age, smoking status, presence of asthma) within a population capable of more than normal exertion, provide useful insight. In this study, lung function was measured before and after hiking, and individual O3 exposures were estimated by averaging hourly O3 concentrations from ambient monitors located at the base and summit. The mean 8-hour average O3 concentration was 0.040 ppm (8-hour average concentration range of 0.021 ppm to 0.074 ppm O3). Decreased lung function was associated with O3 exposure, with the greatest effect estimates reported for the subgroup that reported having asthma or wheezing,
and for those who hiked for longer periods of time.

Here’s how the study was conducted, according to its authors:

During the summers of 1991 and 1992, volunteers (18-64 years of age) were solicited from hikers on Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. Volunteer nonsmokers with complete covariates ( n = 530) had pulmonary function measured before and after their hikes. We calculated each hiker’s posthike percentage change in forced expiratory volume in 1 sec (FEV1 ) , forced vital capacity (FVC) , the ratio of these two (FEV1 /FVC) , forced expiratory flow between 25 and 75% of FVC (FEF 25-75% ), and peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR).

Here are the reported results:

After adjustment for age, sex, smoking status (former versus never) , history of asthma or wheeze, hours hiked, ambient temperature, and other covariates, there was a 2.6% decline in FEV1 [95% confidence interval (CI) , 0.4-4.7 ; p = 0.02] and a 2.2% decline in FVC (CI, 0.8-3.5 ; p = 0.003) for each 50 ppb increment in mean O3.

Accepting these results at face value (i.e., blaming O3 for the reported effect), none are of clinical significance. FEV1 values between 80% to 120% of average are considered normal. It follows then that a 2.6% decline, especially after strenuous hiking, is not clinically significant.

But then is it really appropriate to attribute even this insignificant decline to O3 in the first place?

Fig. 2 in the study indicates that O3 levels varied throughout the day, but the researchers only took spirometry measurements at the beginning and end of each hike. So there’s no data that indicate spirometry measurements varied with changes in O3 levels.

Even if it was possible to wave a statistical wand over the FEV1 and FVC measurements to adjust for the potential confounding risk factors (most of which were self-reported and not verified or validated by the researchers), important potential confounding risk factors variables were omitted, e.g., hiker fitness and hiking intensity to name just two.

Moreover, hikers were volunteers and not selected at random, possibly introducing some sort of bias into the mix.

The researchers needed to show that O3 caused the changes in spirometry, but they didn’t. In any event, the changes weren’t clinically significant.

At most, this study provides evidence that hiking up and down a mountain may slightly affect one’s breathing. It does not show, as the EPA claims, that even low levels of O3 (i.e., levels 47% lower than the current standard) are a public health problem.

Exelon helps Obama attack coal — again!

Chicago-based utility Exelon is now funding efforts to help out the endangered Obama EPA in its jihad against the coal industry.

Last July, the EPA proposed its so-called “Clean Air Transport” rule to further regulate air emissions from coal-fired power plants. The EPA’s alleged concern is that the emissions travel interstate and reduce air quality (fine particulate matter and ground-level ozone) in 31 downwind states.

The rule was finalized in October and is scheduled to go into effect sometime in the spring — except that some coal-burning utilities are getting concerned about the timing of the rule and there is a new sheriff in D.C. (i.e., the GOP-controlled House with power over the EPA’s budget and the inclination to investigate the EPA).

The EPA estimates that the rule will provide anywhere from $120 billion to $290 billion in annual health and welfare benefits and avoid 14,000 to 36,000 premature deaths annually. (It’s too bad that these estimates are entirely bogus, otherwise the EPA could solve our deficit problems almost singlehandedly. But that is a story for another day).

The transport rule, of course, is in addition to the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations that take effect on January 2, 2011 and the EPA’s January 2010 proposal to further ratchet-down the national air quality standards for ground-level ozone. This is a lot of expensive anti-coal regulation that places the EPA high on the new Congress’ “to do” list. So the Obama EPA has reason to be nervous.

Riding to the EPA’s assistance now is the Pacific Economics Group which just issued a report claiming that the EPA has actually underestimated the economic harm caused by interstate transport of coal plant emissions. According to the report:

Pollution from power plants that have failed to install pollution controls is causing nearly $6 billion in annual costs, because of higher labor expenses, lost work days, lost productivity, and higher insurance costs.

As a result of uncontrolled pollution in downwind regions, between 2005 and 2012:

  • Businesses will suffer over $47 billion in costs;
  • Over 360,000 jobs will be lost;
  • State and local governments will lose almost $9.3 billion in tax revenue; and
  • Families and businesses in polluted areas will pay $26.0 billion more for reformulated gasoline as a result of ongoing pollution.

Though the report was prepared on behalf of several no-name Pennsylvania-based “public interest” groups, it was funded by Exelon Corp., the operator of the largest fleet of nuclear power plants in the U.S. — the very same Exelon that is a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership and that lobbied for cap-and-trade.

Exelon and its bobbleheaded CEO John Rowe had planned to make billions of dollars off cap-and-trade, bought John Deere’s wind operation for $860 million in August and hope to advance its nuclear power capabilities at the expense of the coal industry.

Exelon’s new report not only attempts to advance its anti-coal objectives by supposedly validating the EPA’s transport rule, but it also no doubt scores political points with the Obama administration for helping out the soon-to-be-embattled EPA. And then there is that Chicago connection… Oh and did I fail to mention that John Rowe is one of the signatories to a letter in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled, “We’re OK With the EPA’s New Air-Quality Regulations“. Rowe is a felony rentseeker.

This blog will soon begin a series exposing the junk science behind the EPA transport rule — which is perhaps even more appalling than EPA’s endangerment finding for greenhouse gases. Stay tuned!

CFL makers rise to defend incandescent bulb ban

Compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL) makers Philips Electronics, Osram Sylvania and General Electric are scrambling to defend the looming ban on incandescent light bulbs, according to Climatewire.

Philips has sent halogen bulbs to members of Congress and conservative columnists like George Will in an effort to show that CFLs are not the only option to incandescents. Sure, halogens and LEDs are options, but expensive and inferior ones. Try putting LED lights on your Christmas tree — they’re about as aesthetically pleasing as a migraine.

Sylvania is trying to convince people that the 2007 legislation — sponsored by let’s-hope-he’s-not-a-RINO Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich), the chairman-elect of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and signed by the accursed, lame-memoir-hawking George Bush — is not a ban at all. In January 2012, however, you won’t find any 100-watt incandescents on store shelves. In January 2014, 40-watt bulbs will be history. How is this not a ban?

Consumers, in fact, have more choices, says Sylvania. Perhaps, but they’re getting a lot worse.

Philips, Sylvania and GE all lobbied Congress into forcing us to buy more expensive and inferior lighting — all in the name of saving the planet from the dreaded global warming.

Moreover, CFLs are handblown by poor, low-wage Chinese bastards who reportedly are being poisoned by the mercury.

And no, Upton doesn’t get any points for any meaningless regret he expresses or futile effort he may make to repeal the ban. The Senate likely will not pass and/or Obama likely will veto any such bill. You can bet that the CFL makers will make sure of that.

In the next world, may the CEOs and lobbyists of Philips, Sylvania, and GE; Fred Upton and the members of the 110th Congress who voted for the ban; and the accursed George Bush be compelled to read W’s biography ad infinitum by humming and flickering CFL-light.

EPA lawyer: What Constitution?

If you need more evidence that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is out-of-control, consider the comments of EPA senior counsel Bob Sussman as reported by Energy & Environmental Daily last week.

But Bob Sussman, who was EPA’s deputy administrator under President Clinton and returned to the agency to be Jackson’s senior counsel, said the agency has no choice but to carry additional weight these days because of inaction in Congress.

“After two decades of very active legislative activity on the environment, we’ve had 15-plus years in which the consensus and political will to overhaul our environmental statutes has been lacking,” Sussman said.

“It’s a situation which is going to continue because I think Congress is fundamentally divided on the future direction of environmental protection. The statutes that we have, imperfect as they may be, are the statutes that we’re going to have to continue to live with.”

Hello… America-to-Bob-Sussman… under our Constitution, the legislative branch makes the laws and the executive branch executes them. EPA has no constitutional authority to take any action that has not been not previously authorized by Congress. Contrary to Sussman-think, the EPA cannot take action that, in effect, “overhauls our environmental statutes” and it cannot “carry additional weight” on its own initiative.

One of the highest priority items for the 112th Congress will be to get a grip on the outlaw EPA.

Chevy saves the planet for $4 per car?

by Steve Milloy
December 2, 2010, DailyCaller.com

General Motors has apparently had an epiphany. GM now “realizes” that it “shares the planet with everyone” and wants “to do more to help keep it clean.” So GM has pledged to buy carbon offsets representing one year’s worth of greenhouse gas emissions from the 1.9 million Chevys projected to be sold during 2011.

Under the Chevy Carbon Reduction program, GM will spend up to $40 million over five years offsetting about 8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

There is much less here than meets the eye.

First, while GM describes the program’s cost as “substantial,” it’s really not. GM expects to sell about 10 million Chevys over the next five years — so the actual expenditure works out to about $4 per car. That triviality will be matched by the program’s environmental impact.

Human activities emit about 40 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually. So if all goes as planned, GM’s program will reduce global human greenhouse gas emissions by about 0.004 percent over the next five years. GM calls this “a start” and denies that the program is “greenwashing.”

In fact, GM states on its web site that, “This is really about making a positive statement to our customers. And letting them know that we are committed to doing the right thing.” But merely claiming green-ness while accomplishing nothing tangible for the environment fits the definition of greenwashing perfectly — “the deceptive use of green PR or green marketing in order to promote a misleading perception that a company’s policies or products are environmentally friendly,” according to Wikipedia’s definition of the term.

And it’s quite possible that the Chevy Carbon Reduction program will accomplish even less than the company believes since it involves the purchase of so-called “carbon offsets.” GM’s $4-per-Chevy expense will be directed to the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, an Oregon-based non-profit that will “invest” the money in purportedly climate-friendly projects like planting trees, and solar and wind power.

But carbon offsets can be murky endeavors — so much so than when the Government Accounting Office (GAO) reported on them in 2008, concerns about their legitimacy overflowed into the report’s title, “Carbon Offsets: The U.S. Voluntary Market Is Growing, but Quality Assurance Poses Challenges for Market Participants.”

The basic problem with offsets is that buyers can be ripped-off fairly easily. Offset sellers claim the proceeds go toward efforts to prevent the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But as greenhouse gas emissions are invisible, challenging to estimate, and the accounting for these projects is typically not open to public scrutiny, buyers must rely on the credibility of the brokers and project operators. The GAO found that “the information provided to consumers by retailers offered limited assurance of credibility.” In other words, buyers beware.

Aside from any schemes and scams run by individual offset brokers and project operators, there is the overlay of the radical environmental agenda on the offset industry. GM’s offset broker, the Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF), is run by a former employee of the radical Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). BEF’s offsets are “certified” by an organization called Green-e, the board of directors of which includes members of NRDC and the radical Union of Concerned Scientists — as well as BEF’s senior vice president. So, not only are BEF and Green-e not independent of one another at the management level, they are threaded together ideologically by ties to radical environmentalism, a movement whose members will say and do almost anything to advance their social and political agenda. And GM is going to rely on assurances from BEF and Green-e about offsetting invisible greenhouse gas emissions.

Should any of this matter to consumers? Who cares whether GM scams and gets scammed for a few dollars per car? Bailouts aside, taxpayers and consumers should already be angry with the “Big Three.” Chrysler, Ford and GM are all members of the NRDC-run U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a big business-radical environmentalist coalition that lobbied for cap and trade. If the Big Three and their green buddies had succeeded in foisting cap and trade upon us during the 111th Congress, millions of U.S. jobs and trillions of dollars in GDP would have vanished during the ensuing years.

What separates Chrysler and Ford from GM presently is that, cutting through all the nonsense, the Chevy Carbon Reduction program is little more than a $40 million wealth transfer from consumers via GM to anti-consumer radical environmentalists and their allies. The good news for GM is that when I get a new car in 2011, no one will need to worry about any emissions from a Chevy.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Regnery 2009).

Obama: No cap-and-trade? Then no drilling!

President Obama’s reversal yesterday on offshore drilling should surprise no one.

When he announced plans for more drilling last March, President Obama was really offering it as a carrot to get the oil industry to sign on to cap-and-trade. That gambit failed. Cap-and-trade is dead and so now is his offer of more offshore drilling.

The administration’s reference to the Gulf oil spill as a reason for the reversal is simple camouflage for the withdrawal of an offer that was never sincere in the first place.

On balance, President Obama is the loser. Cap-and-trade is dead forever, while offshore drilling opportunities could expand as early as January 20, 2013.

NYTimes lets facts intrude on alarmist narrative

A funny thing happened on the New York Times’ way to climate alarmism today — a paragraph of debunking facts.

In an above-the-fold, front-page story, the Times’ Leslie Kaufman tried to tell a sad tale about global warming-induced sea-level rise wreaking havoc in Norfolk, VA.

If the moon is going to be full the night before Hazel Peck needs her car, for example, she parks it on a parallel block, away from the river. The next morning, she walks through a neighbor’s backyard to avoid the two-to-three-foot-deep puddle that routinely accumulates on her street after high tides.

For Ms. Peck and her neighbors, it is the only way to live with the encroaching sea.

As sea levels rise, tidal flooding is increasingly disrupting life here and all along the East Coast, a development many climate scientists link to global warming.

And of course, what tale of global warming would be complete without an “expert”?

Many Norfolk residents hope their problems will serve as a warning.

“We are the front lines of climate change,” said Jim Schultz, a science and technology writer who lives on Richmond Crescent near Ms. Peck. “No one who has a house here is a skeptic.”

Kaufman’s tale of woe then ends with the “bitter reality” of global warming:

“The fact is that there is not enough engineering to go around to mitigate the rising sea,” he said. “For us, it is the bitter reality of trying to live in a world that is getting warmer and wetter.”

Unfortunately for the Times, Kaufman and Schultz, some editor (with an ironic sense of humor) inserted the following text into the middle of the story:

Like many other cities, Norfolk was built on filled-in marsh. Now that fill is settling and compacting. In addition, the city is in an area where significant natural sinking of land is occurring. The result is that Norfolk has experienced the highest relative increase in sea level on the East Coast — 14.5 inches since 1930, according to readings by the Sewells Point naval station here.

So climate alarmism and Norfolk have much in common. Both were built in on a faulty foundation. Not unexpectedly, both are now sinking.

What’s remarkable about the Times’ coverage of both is that facts — even when printed in plain English in the middle of the story — just don’t matter.

JunkScience to Al Gore: En garde!

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — JunkScience.com today launched the web site GoreFacts.com as a response to KochIndustriesFacts.com, Al Gore’s attack on Koch Industries for opposing climate alarmism.

“I think Al Gore may come to regret his desperate and juvenile attack on Koch Industries,” said JunkScience.com publisher Steve Milloy. “Gore has now inspired us to accumulate documented facts about Gore and to present them to the public in a single web site dedicated to spotlighting Gore’s habitual hypocrisy, dishonesty and creepiness.” Milloy added.

The Gore attack on Koch Industries is just the opening salvo in what Milloy expects to be an ugly campaign of personal attacks that Gore and other anti-fossil fuel activists and business interests seem likely to run over the next two years.

“Media reports indicate that environmental activists will be working to make political gains in the 2012 elections so that they can get their agenda back on track in 2013,” Milloy observed. “Between now and the 2012 elections, I expect that Al Gore and his allies will conduct a slash-and-burn attack campaign against their opponents,” said Milloy.

But as the defeat of cap-and-trade indicates, Milloy and his allies are up to the challenge.

“In early 2009, conventional wisdom was that cap-and-trade was a done deal,” said Milloy. “But hard work by skeptics, along with a lousy economy, the rise of tea parties and the Climategate expose, ultimately drove a stake through junk science-fueled and economy-killing cap-and-trade,” noted Milloy.

Surprisingly, Milloy credits environmentalists with helping to defeat their own agenda.

“Al Gore is one of the most polarizing personalities in American politics and it was always a mystery why the environmental movement allowed Gore to co-opt their Marxist-socialist movement so he could to advance his personal profiteering – but it made arguing the skeptics’ position much easier and we thank them for it,” Milloy added.

One of the facts on GoreFacts.com is Al Gore’s braggadocio that poets will be singing his praises 1,000 years from now.

“Meantime, the rest of us can look forward to the next two years of hilarious Gore gaffs. If the greens are lucky, maybe the they’ll get their agenda back on track in a thousand years,” Milloy concluded.

Steve Milloy is the publisher of JunkScience.com and author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Regnery 2009).

Al Gore cries crocodile tears over ethanol

Al Gore admitted today that corn ethanol was “not a good policy,” according to Reuters — but that’s not the end of the story.

Though he campaigned for ethanol in the past, Gore said,

“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol… First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small… It’s hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going… One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president… The size, the percentage of corn particularly, which is now being (used for) first generation ethanol definitely has an impact on food prices… The competition with food prices is real.”

Gore then went on to support so-called second generation technologies which do not compete with food, for example cellulosic technologies which use chemicals or enzymes to extract sugar from fiber in wood, waste or grass. He said,

“I do think second and third generation that don’t compete with food prices will play an increasing role, certainly with aviation fuels.”

Is this a genuine mea culpa on the part of Gore or crocodile tears?

If we turn to the investment portfolio of the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers (KPCB) where Al Gore is a partner, we find that KPCB has invested in Mascoma Corporation, whose business is cellulosic ethanol. Here’s how KPCB’s web site describes Mascoma,

Leading in the development of bio and process technology for cost-effective production of cellulosic ethanol, an inexpensive and source of renewable energy. Cambridge, MA

In 2008, Mascoma received $61 million in financing from a group that included KPCB. In 2006, KPCB was part of a $30 million financing package for Mascoma.

And who knows what other cellulosic ethanol ventures KPCB and Gore have going?

The Reuters reporters didn’t ask Al Gore about his cellulosic ethanol business interests and, of course, Honest Al Gore didn’t volunteer those revealing tidbits either.

So while Al Gore appears to be lamenting bad policy that he supported, instead he is really just trashing corn ethanol in hopes of advancing cellulosic ethanol and his investment in Mascoma.

Lom-Gore-borg: Paint it white

I see a black road and I want it painted white.

In a Washington Post op-ed today, that “septical environmentalist,” Bjorn Lomborg, advocated whitewashing roof-tops and streets to reflect sunlight in hopes of reducing the alleged warming impacts of manmade greenhouse gas emissions.

In support of his proposal, Lomborg cited a recernt paper by Hashem Akbari estimating that every 100 square feet of black surface painted white would offset one ton of carbon dioxide emitted. Akbari estimates that if all urban roof-tops and streets were painted white, about 44 billion tons of CO2-equivalent would be offset. Akbari claims this would offset the effect of the growth in emissions rates for 11 years.

Akbari estimates that roof-tops and streets cover about 910 billion square meters of the Earth’s surface. Given the coverage of a gallon of paint (about 400 square feet or 37.2 square meters), it would only take about 27 billion cans of paint (allowing for 10 percent waste) to do the job. This would be great for the paint industry which only sells about 630 million gallons of paint annually in the U.S. And of course, once we finish painting the world white, it will be time for another coat. BTW, it costs about $8 per gallon to dispose of paint, about $20 billion for the amount of paint at issue.

Lomborg concludes his op-ed with,

Obviously, whether it involves dikes or buckets of white paint, adaptation is not a long-term solution to global warming. Rather, it will enable us to get by while we figure out the best way to address the root causes of man-made climate change. This may not seem like much, but at a time when fears of a supposedly imminent apocalypse threaten to swamp rational debate about climate policy, it’s worth noting that coping with climate change is something we know how to do.

So Lomborg apparently wants us to spend trillions of dollars continually whitewashing the world while “we” figure out how to address those “root causes of man-made climate change.” Of course, Lomborg has already decided what needs to be done:

Ultimately, we’re not going to solve any of these problems until we figure out a way to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Meet the new Al Gore. Same as the old Al Gore.