The EPA's Polluted Science

The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to tighten air pollution standards again. What we really need, however, is an effective program to control the EPA. The EPA is facing a legal deadline of September for deciding whether to make the federal standards for fine particulate matter (soot) and ground-level ozone (smog) more stringent. While this may sound like a laudable goal on the surface, the absurdity of the process becomes readily apparent once you learn that the EPA's air quality standards for soot and smog issued in 1997 have yet to be fully implemented and their results assessed. Worse, the congressional opposition to this new EPA crackdown has opted for the usually futile tactic of arguing costs rather than science with the agency.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA must consider health risks but not costs in determining the so-called "national ambient air quality standards." Despite the law's express prohibition on the consideration of costs, Sen. George Voinovich, D-Ohio, is arguing that hundreds of counties would violate the EPA's new standards, according to an article in the Clean Air Report (July 27). Voinovich asserted at a July 19 hearing on the EPA's proposed rules that while he was governor of Ohio, the state had difficulty in attracting businesses because of the EPA rules.

While I appreciate the importance of Voinovich's concerns, his assumption that fellow politicians, the public and the media -- all largely ignorant of the realities of air quality science -- will prioritize jobs over the public health will not carry the day in this debate.

Voinovich apparently doesn't remember the circus surrounding the EPA's issuance of air quality rules for soot and smog in 1997. The costs of those rules -- still not fully implemented, mind you -- were estimated to be $100 billion per year for soot and were not estimated at all for smog because they were extraordinarily high (remember that, under the law, the EPA is not supposed to consider costs at all, so their calculation is technically not even necessary).

The EPA did, however, claim that its rules would prevent thousands of premature deaths per year, thus satisfying the legal and political hurdles to issuing the rules -- at least on a superficial level. And this aspect of the EPA's rulemaking is where Sen. Voinovich - if he really wanted to spotlight problems with the agency and its rulemaking -- should focus his attention.

The stark fact is that there is not a single believable study demonstrating that soot and smog at current levels cause any significant health problems -- let alone any deaths. Yes, the EPA has perhaps dozens if not hundreds of studies that purport to link soot, in particular, with premature death, but every single one of these studies is easily debunked as an exercise in statistical wishful thinking. All of the studies that supposedly link soot with premature deaths rely on extraordinarily poor health and soot exposure data, and weak statistical correlations.

They're even more laughable given that the precedent cited by the agency for relying on such weak statistical correlations is the EPA's own 1993 report claiming to link secondhand smoke with lung cancer -- a study that was eviscerated and vacated by a federal court in 1998 because the EPA's science was so poor and contrived in nature.

The health data the EPA's studies relied upon was so dubious in quality that when Congress requested that the agency turn over the data for independent review, the EPA's only realistic choice was to stonewall - and it did, refusing to turn over the data to a Congress that blinked in the face of bureaucratic refusal. It was a daring tactic that served the agency well as it entirely prevented any meaningful review of the agency's health claims, which subsequently helped the agency beat back legal efforts to block the rules.

What Sen. Voinovich also apparently doesn't understand is the EPA modus operandi when it comes to science and regulation. You might think that the EPA first looks at the science and then decides whether regulation is necessary - you'd be wrong. The EPA typically decides first whether to regulate, and then it molds and manipulates the science to fit its regulatory decisions. This has long been standard practice at the agency - a 1992 report entitled "Safeguarding the Future: Credible Science, Credible Decisions" by a blue ribbon panel of scientists reviewing the EPA's use of science concluded that the EPA "adjusts science to fit policy" - and was one of the reasons given by the federal court for vacating the EPA's secondhand smoke risk assessment.

If Sen. Voinovich is truly concerned about the economic impacts of the EPA's proposed air quality standards, he would start at the proposal's Achilles heel -the EPA's junk science.

Source






The Quixotic Quest for Carbon Neutrality

Post lifted from Cheat-seeking Missiles

Carbon neutrality, as its name implies, is the quest to offset your "carbon footprint" -- the amount of carbon your business or lifestyle puts into the atmosphere -- with credits deemed to reduce carbon output by an equal amount. Basically, it's "burn a watt, plant a tree," but it gets more complex quickly.

Al Gore bragged recently that he and Tipper are going carbon-neutral, and said he proofed his pudding with his flick, An Inconvenient Truth. Variety details how Gore's Opus Climatus became carbon neutral:

Paramount Classics and Participant [Productions] have teamed with NativeEnergy on an eco-savvy way to tout the film: They're offsetting 100% of the carbon dioxide emissions generated by pic-related globetrotting activities such as air travel, car services and hotels.

NativeEnergy calculates a "carbon footprint" based on the promo activities, with Par Classics and Participant splitting the costs associated with the footprint. NativeEnergy will use the proceeds to help build new Native American, Alaskan Native Village and farmer-owned renewable energy projects.

It's nice that the Native Americans got some renewable energy. I wonder how much carbon will be burned delivering the equipment and the trainers, and how that carbon will be offset.

Note that Gore did not attempt to offset the energy involved in making the film; only in marketing it. Production crew travels, lighting sets, manufacturing cameras, editing and duping the film ... indeed, showing the film in air conditioned theaters that folks drive to ... these are carbon-spewing activities that Gore chose not to be neutral on. Why? Presumably because it would be far too costly.

But what's really obvious is that carbon neutrality in this application is nothing more than another Leftist wealth redistribution scheme: Rich politico-enviros and Hollywood producers give some of their money to poor Native Americans, then recover it by writing it off as marketing expense, so the American taxpayers foot the bill.

In concept, carbon neutrality is blissful. It allows us to purge our materialism guilt by giving to the church of Mother Earth. After all, there's nothing wrong with planting trees, or encouraging the development of alternative energy sources through Renewable Energy Credits, another carbon neutrality strategy. Really. I'm not being sarcastic. There's nothing wrong with that. Go for it.

But there's nothing wrong with not doing it, either. Corporations and individuals give in many ways, and the carbon neutrality movement is a very clever way to encourage their giving to go into eco-causes. But that can mean that other worthy causes -- orphaned children, inner city poverty, coversion of lost souls -- will get less money, and human suffering will increase because the enviros are getting more money to chase the windmill of turning back their demon de jour, global warming.

Because this is a Leftist concept, the next logical step will be to mandate carbon neutrality by forcing businesses to pursue it. In so doing, they are fostering Socialism, forcing their thinking into the free market. Their thinking always is detrimental to the free market. When the free market suffers, people suffer by getting laid off ... which is more impactful on their quality of life than global warming.

Finally, as shown in this satellite photo of air pollution in China -- carbon pollutants that are now wafting over our shores from the smelters, factories and diesel trucks of the eco-bruttality that is Communist China -- we see the final fallacy of carbon neutrality. It focuses on the nations that are working hard to increase efficiency and decrease pollutants, and does nothing globally to fix problems in China and India.

Oh, they may have a handy project you can help fund to put windmills in some farm village in rural China, but what's needed is eco-diplomacy, cutting Favored Nation trade status and tough policy, not chanting Om and prancing after carbon neutrality.

Now that the enviros have introduced the concept of carbon neutrality, they should keep their little promotion machine going and let the free market do its stuff. If they do, carbon neutrality is a fine thing.

But it's more likely they will do what they always do. They will guilt-trip us, indoctrinate our children, and not practice what they preach. (How does a big, fundraising-needy enviro group go carbon-neutral on a direct mail campaign to a couple million recipients?) When that fails to turn public opinion enough for them (and they have a very hard time realizing when they've been victorious) they will use legislation and the courts to force their will on us.








ISRAELI RAINMAKERS

If this ever gets off the ground, the Greenies will of course oppose it as "unnatural"

While scientists have made great strides in recent years in understanding and predicting the weather, the idea of taking control of the weather and making it rain has remained within the realm of mysticism and religion. Now Israeli researchers are part of an international team along with American and Belgian colleagues gearing up to perform one of the greatest and most elusive tricks of all by causing the heavens to bring rain. With the potential to alleviate the hunger problem in the world, the Geshem Project (named for the Hebrew word for rain) hopes to turn myth into science.

Scientists plan to produce rain in sub-tropical areas during the cloudless summer months by altering air currents using a unique thermal material developed in Israel. Led by Professor Leon Brenig of the University of Brussels Department of Physics, Project Geshem partners desert researchers from Israel's Ben Gurion University of the Negev with computer analysts at UCLA in California, and space imagery from NASA. The technique involves spreading a large black solar-absorbing surface over several square kilometers of land to generate intense and asymmetrical thermal emissions. Energy from sunlight is absorbed by the material and then radiated back into the air to heat the lower atmosphere with minimal loss into the ground. The heated air rises taking water condensation high enough to form clouds and produce out-of-season rain.

"It will make a huge difference." Brenig told ISRAEL21c. "In a region where there is 150 mm. a year it would go up to 600-700 mm. a year." Eli Zaady, a researcher on the project and ecologist from the BGU Open Space Agriculture Research organization, explains the technique could increase crops for a given area by 40 percent. "It all depends on the amount moisture in the air," said Zaady.

Sub-tropical climates are vulnerable to drought during the summer due to an atmospheric phenomenon know as the Hadley Cells. First described by their namesake George Hadley in the 18th century to explain the Trade Winds, Hadley cells are convection cycles of air that affect the weather in tropical and sub-tropical climates. The hot equatorial sun heats air in the low atmosphere causing it to rise and flow away from the equator towards the North and South. The air thermals carry water condensation up until it forms clouds that produce rain and the humid equatorial climates. However, as the air-currents reach sub-tropical regions they cool and descend preventing local water condensation from rising high enough to form clouds. The effect deprives sub-tropical areas of rain during the warm months of spring and summer.

"The object is to locally fight against that descent," Brenig says and estimates that air above the black surface could be raised by 40-50 degrees centigrade above the surrounding temperature creating a 'chimney' of rising air currents. The artificial thermal will boost water vapor to around 3000 meters where it can condense into water droplets that create clouds.

Materials with the required asymmetric thermal properties are hard to find. Mirrors, for example, although highly reflective would concentrate the heat in a small area whereas the Geshem project requires heating a wide expanse of air. The search for the 'ideal' black surface brought researchers to Acktar, an Israeli company that specializes in making custom materials with unique surface properties. Founded in 1994, Acktar, is a world technology leader in the development, and production of black, light absorbing coatings that deliver unique performance due to their high specific surface area. The coatings are based on vacuum deposition technologies that use a flow of atoms or ions directed towards a surface to build specific layers or crystalline phases on an atomic level.

Whereas there are other materials that absorb and reflect heat - such as road tarmac for example - the Acktar panels are unique in their highly asymmetrical properties and easy deployment. "You aren't going to put down tarmac over large areas," jokes Acktar CEO Zvi Finkelstein from the company's manufacturing site in Kiryat Gat.

The Ackerman material is so light that the company will be able to wrap several kilometers of material onto rolls for easy deployment and relocation. The material will be laid out on panels in long modules allowing maintenance crews to service the panels from vehicles driving between the rows. By covering an area of between five to nine square kilometers with the black material researchers estimate rainfall on an area of 40-100 square kilometers downwind. Clouds will form along a strip as wide as the black surface and up to 30 kilometers long during the hours from midday till five in the afternoon.

The cost of setting up a full-size black surface would run at over 80 million Euros, about comparable to establishing a desalinization plant. However, the operational costs are minimal and the technology simple to operate. Whereas desalinization requires a safe method of disposing with the saline by-products and energy to drive the process the Geshem method is environment-friendly and powered by the sun. "Solar energy is free," Brenig notes.

The method can be applied to any dry region located in subtropical or tropical latitudes within 150 km from an ocean, sea, or large lake. In coastal regions with high solar radiation intensity, the dominant wind during the day is a steady sea breeze that flows from the coast inland. The predictable wind will cause rains on accurately determined culture zones on the continent almost each day during sunny seasons. Adapted agricultural and water-collecting techniques could then make best use of the predictable rain.

The idea of using a large solar-heated surface to make clouds has been around since the 1960s. However, at that time the only suitable black-surface material was asphalt and the computing power required to test the theory was still decades away. Brenig first toyed with the idea of playing with the weather in the 1980s but was also hampered by limited computer power. "It is hard to simulate because meteorological predications are often not very good," Brenig explains. "We need very accurate predications such as how much rain will be produced to evaluate the efficiency of the system. The problem is that the mathematical models for cloud formations are still in their infancy."

The project was put on hold until 2003 when Brenig contacted the Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research at BGU. Brenig chose Israel because of its arid regions and BGU's worldwide reputation for desert research. Armed with space images from NASA Brenig turned to the number-crunching super-computers at UCLA to run simulation on models in order to determine the optimal size and shape for the black surface. "Meteorological simulations are the most complex in the world and require the fastest computers," he notes.

Initial simulations confirmed the theory was reasonable and the search began to find an efficient and environment-friendly material to create the black surface. Now researchers are putting the finishing touches to the computer-simulations and hope to garner the financial support for a trial within in a year on an area of 3000 square meters in Israel's Negev desert that will use water vapor and breezes from the nearby Mediterranean Sea. Finklestein estimates the trial will cost around two million euros and Brenig is seeking support from the European Commission, NATO's Science for Peace, and various water authorities to fund the trial. Israeli authorities are keen to back the project and have already indicated that they will approve the required land area.

Zaady says that if the experiment is a success a larger trial will follow and Brenig is confident that if the technique works according to the simulation the idea will be adopted in various sub-tropical regions around the world that are suffering from desertification. Northeastern Brazil, North Africa, the Kalahari and Sahara deserts could all benefit from the method. In southeast Spain where desertification is claiming large swathes of agricultural land authorities have already shown great interest in the project and have indicated they would finance a large trial in that country. "It can bring water to a place where there is no water," Finklestein says. "Where there is water there is life, and then there is no limit to the imagination."

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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