From “Pull the Plug on Electric Car Subsidies” in today’s Wall Street Journal:
If you’re looking for a car that makes good economic sense in these tough times, PEVs simply don’t make the grade. Unless crude oil prices rise close to $300 per barrel and battery costs fall by 75%, a PEV is more expensive than a gasoline-powered vehicle.
… and neither, let alone both, will be happening any time soon.
“The American Lung Association has targeted House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton for his efforts to stop U.S. EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions by placing billboards within sight of his district offices linking climate change with increased childhood asthma,” reports E&E News PM.
But as we reported last week in “EPA owns the American Lung Association,” the EPA has paid the American Lung Association over $20 million in the last ten years, and has paid the ALA many more millions in a symbiotic relationship going back to at least 1990.
The EPA-ALA relationship works something like this: EPA pays the ALA and, in return, the ALA agitates for more stringent EPA air quality regulation, including by lawsuit. Now the ALA is attacking a politician who is aiming to rein in the out-of-control agency.
In addition to defunding National Public Radio, the House GOP should look at the EPA’s funding of American Lung Association. This abuse of taxpayer money is also a good subject for watchdog Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA).
A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine today debunks the EPA-claimed link between exposure to mercury and cardiovascular disease.
Click here for the study abstract.
This study is important as it debunks part of the EPA’s rationale for its recently proposed clamp down on mercury and other emissions from power plants.
Click here for the proposed rule excerpt in which the EPA discusses its view of the methymercury-heart disease data.
The oxymoron-ish nature of a “left-wing think tank” is on display in the Center for American Progress’ latest pitch for a so-called “clean energy standard” (CES). Continue reading Clean energy's junk economics
The Obama administration and its Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is out to destroy the coal industry through its new greenhouse gas regulations. Americans need to take action to stop the Obama EPA NOW! Continue reading Stop EPA Now!
Not that it takes much to confuse Republican politicians more than they already are about the EPA and its regulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs), but the Greenwire article below tries to sow further confusion by claiming that Republicans are at least partially responsible for the confusion over whether the Supreme Court forced the EPA to regulate GHGs. Our comments are [bracketed in bold]. Continue reading Clearing the air on EPA's Supreme Court 'mandate'
The Obama administration is not wasting the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis either. Continue reading Obama admin fans flames of radiation fear
… at ambient exposure levels in the U.S.
Yesterday, the U.S. Environmental over-Protection Agency proposed “the first-ever national standards for mercury, arsenic and other toxic air pollution from power plants.”
The EPA stated,
Toxic air pollutants like mercury from coal- and oil-fired power plants have been shown to cause neurological damage, including lower IQ, in children exposed in the womb and during early development.
This statement is false. There is no such evidence from any credible scientific study.
Mercury is known to be toxic only at extremely high (i.e., poisoning) exposure levels that have been rarely experienced in the real world.
In addition to the lack of credible positive evidence linking typical mercury exposures with adverse health effects, studies of Seychelles Islands children have failed to link mercury exposure with developmental or other health problems.
It is the dose that makes the poison — and ambient exposures to mercury in the U.S. are simply not high enough to cause any harm.
If we were to consider mercury as a neurotoxin, as the EPA does, then we would have to consider water as a neurotoxin, too, since overhydration can cause fatal disturbance of brain function.
For more on mercury visit JunkScience.com’s Debunkosaurus.
The European Union’s taxation commissioner plans to propose a new two-part fuel tax, split into a carbon tax of 20 euros per ton of CO2 and a minimum energy tax on motor fuels and heating fuels. (Reuters).
Surgeon General Regina Benjamin said today it was appropriate for West Coast residents to buy iodide tablets as a precaution in light of the unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan.
This is ridiculous. Americans will not be exposed to significant amounts of radiation from Japan and so there is no need to scare people.
I’m not sure whether she’s just scaring people in order to help kill off nuclear power in the U.S. or whether she is really that ignorant. But whichever, Regina Benjamin needs to go.
At today’s House Energy and Commerce Committee mark-up of the Upton-Inhofe bill to strip EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases, Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) tried to defend the EPA by offering a recent American Lung Association poll that purports to show public opinion favoring the EPA.
What Congress needs to know, however, is that the American Lung Association is bought-and-paid-for by the EPA. In the last 10 years, the EPA has given the ALA $20,405,655, according to EPA records.
The master-servant relationship between the EPA and ALA extends back to at least the early 1990s. As John Merline reported in Investors Business Daily (Jan. 28, 1997), between 1990 and 1995, the EPA gave the American Lung Association $5 million — even though the ALA was suing the EPA at the time. Although not many grantors give grants to organizations that sue them, at least in the regular world, the EPA likes to be sued by its buddies because such lawsuits invariably expand the agency’s powers.
So it’s not really surprising (or meaningful) that the ALA issued a poll supporting the EPA.
“After weathering a winter of intimidation, Mayor Bloomberg has apparently capitulated to an Environmental Protection Agency scare campaign. The issue: PCBs — three little letters that are about to sock New York schools with another $700 million funding drain.” (New York Post)