Tom Harris from Ottawa Canada, is eloquent here in his appeal to challenge the climate science to hold back nonsense regs on carbon dioxide, but I think he leaves a lot of challenges in his briefcase because, like most hard scientists and engineers, he doesn’t know that a real weakness of the EPA is their human health effects research–it is breathless and brainless and substitutes scaremongering for rational analysis.
Continue reading Science challenges on EPA Coal fired plant regs
Let’s talk psych and the social sciences, a wonderful area for junk science detection. A place where unscientific theories and practices evolve and flourish.
To make your sunday more interesting and gratifying, please consider this report of a federal judge’s opinion about run off from a Chicken farm. Continue reading Is rainwater run off pollution? epa says yes
The recent release of a study from Harvard that claims small particles as a major cause of lung cancer causes us to revisit the question of human exposure experiments. The Harvard researchers assert they found lung cancer in non smokers and it must be air pollution. They cannot, of course, eliminate papilloma virus or other causes, and eliminate other confounders, but no matter, they got some publicity and will get more funding.
Regular readers of this site know that Milloy and Dunn submitted Declarations in support of a lawsuit filed in Virginia Federal Court to stop human exposure experiments at the U of North Carolina School of Medicine by an EPA sponsored group, exposing paid volunteers to small particle pollution.
The Federal Court dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction, but the preliminary discovery showed that 10 US medical schools are doing the same types of human experiments.
Now Harvard reemphasizes the toxic, Carcinogenic nature of small particles, claimed on the basis of the typical data dredging epidemiology.
Either it is or it isn’t carcinogenic, and even if the EPA is lying about the carcinogenicity, any experimental subject now has to decide–did they lie to me or to the Congress about small particles.
Junk Science strikes again.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/us-air-pollution-idUSTRE79R5NM20111028
THE COMPANY WITH THE STASH
Election campaign contributions certainly can be an identifiable way to predict who will get treated well by a rich and powerful administrative state.
Crony capitalism has many hues.
US Government largesse is measured in trillions (that’s 1000, 1000, millions give or take).
Tribal politics is a real factor in the 1st world, played with real money. Consider Nazi business partnerships in concentration camp labor, at many sites. Companies we all recognize, even now, Astra, BMW, Puch, Shell, Siemens, Daimler Benz, Krupp, Ford, Messerschmitt, Volkswagen, Zeitz—you get the idea.
http://remember.org/educate/companies.html
Our present day international economy includes as an equal player that is considered a powerhouse soon to exceed US economic output, the Chinese economy that rides on the backs of rural “visiting” city workers who are a modern version of slaves or indentured workers allowed to stay in their cities of work, but not to become residents.
Read more.
You might wonder, how do these generous contributions listed below expect a return on the investment, for law firms and universities and government or government dependent entities? Well the money and influence certainly are attractive prizes for “friends” of political powerhouses.
Eisenhower warned us in his farewell address, there is the Military Industrial Complex but there is also the Government Research complex, and if you are an expert or a “consultant” or a source of research and support for government policy making and regulation, you would be well advised to nurture government relationships, that result in favors, grants, contracts, and a place at the conference table when things are passed out.
During the merger mania of the 80s the joke was that even minor players at the final negotiations could end up fabulously wealthy from the crumbs that fell of the merger table. Same story today with government sources measured in hundreds of billions for various sectors.
https://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?id=N00009638
When citizens petition the government or the courts for fair treatment there are barricades. Continue reading Junk science protected by the courts