Air pollution scare debunked

Greenies love to condemn urban air pollution and say how bad for us it is. Faulty science on fine particulate pollution (PM2.5) was the bedrock of the Obama EPA’s war on coal. Particulates don’t just make you sick; they are directly related “to dying sooner than you should,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson falsely told Congress. There is no level “at which premature mortality effects do not occur,” Mr. Obama’s next Administrator Gina McCarthy dishonestly testified. See also some of my previous comments here

The latest research findings below are very powerful evidence on the question. The study included the entire Medicare population from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2012. And their finding that only one in a million people die from particulate air pollution is pretty decisive. If you bother about that tiny risk, you should never get out of bed.

The authors pretend that their findings support the Greenies but they would have been reviled if they had said the truth:  That their findings show that air pollution is not dangerous.

Air pollution from smoky cooking-fires has probably been part of the human experience for something like a million years and we have adapted to it.  We just cough it up.


Association of Short-term Exposure to Air Pollution With Mortality in Older Adults

Key Points

Question:  What is the association between short-term exposure to air pollution below current air quality standards and all-cause mortality?

Finding:  In a case-crossover study of more than 22 million deaths, each 10-μg/m3 daily increase in fine particulate matter and 10–parts-per-billion daily increase in warm-season ozone exposures were associated with a statistically significant increase of 1.42 and 0.66 deaths per 1 million persons at risk per day, respectively.

Meaning:  Day-to-day changes in fine particulate matter and ozone exposures were significantly associated with higher risk of all-cause mortality at levels below current air quality standards, suggesting that those standards may need to be reevaluated.

Abstract

Importance:  The US Environmental Protection Agency is required to reexamine its National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) every 5 years, but evidence of mortality risk is lacking at air pollution levels below the current daily NAAQS in unmonitored areas and for sensitive subgroups.

Objective:  To estimate the association between short-term exposures to ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, and at levels below the current daily NAAQS, and mortality in the continental United States.

Design, Setting, and Participants:  Case-crossover design and conditional logistic regression to estimate the association between short-term exposures to PM2.5 and ozone (mean of daily exposure on the same day of death and 1 day prior) and mortality in 2-pollutant models. The study included the entire Medicare population from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2012, residing in 39 182 zip codes.

Exposures:  Daily PM2.5 and ozone levels in a 1-km × 1-km grid were estimated using published and validated air pollution prediction models based on land use, chemical transport modeling, and satellite remote sensing data. From these gridded exposures, daily exposures were calculated for every zip code in the United States. Warm-season ozone was defined as ozone levels for the months April to September of each year.

Main Outcomes and Measures:  All-cause mortality in the entire Medicare population from 2000 to 2012.

Results:  During the study period, there were 22 433 862 million case days and 76 143 209 control days. Of all case and control days, 93.6% had PM2.5 levels below 25 μg/m3, during which 95.2% of deaths occurred (21 353 817 of 22 433 862), and 91.1% of days had ozone levels below 60 parts per billion, during which 93.4% of deaths occurred (20 955 387 of 22 433 862). The baseline daily mortality rates were 137.33 and 129.44 (per 1 million persons at risk per day) for the entire year and for the warm season, respectively. Each short-term increase of 10 μg/m3 in PM2.5 (adjusted by ozone) and 10 parts per billion (10−9) in warm-season ozone (adjusted by PM2.5) were statistically significantly associated with a relative increase of 1.05% (95% CI, 0.95%-1.15%) and 0.51% (95% CI, 0.41%-0.61%) in daily mortality rate, respectively. Absolute risk differences in daily mortality rate were 1.42 (95% CI, 1.29-1.56) and 0.66 (95% CI, 0.53-0.78) per 1 million persons at risk per day. There was no evidence of a threshold in the exposure-response relationship.

Conclusions and Relevance:  In the US Medicare population from 2000 to 2012, short-term exposures to PM2.5 and warm-season ozone were significantly associated with increased risk of mortality. This risk occurred at levels below current national air quality standards, suggesting that these standards may need to be reevaluated.

SOURCE





Putting U.S. Energy Production in Perspective

"The increase in oil and gas production is equal to seven times the energy output of all domestic solar and wind." 

As we previously reported, oil production in the U.S. is truly something to behold. It doesn’t get much attention, but in February the Energy Information Administration calculated that more than 10 million barrels’ worth of oil is generated every single day in the U.S. — a five-decade high. However, you might be wondering how oil and natural gas production together fare in comparison to some of the Left’s coveted renewable energy projects. In a recent op-ed, the Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce provides the fascinating answer:

Over the past decade, merely the increase — I repeat, just the increase — in US oil and gas production is equal to seven times the total energy production of every wind turbine and solar project in the United States. … In 2008, US oil production was about 5.2 million barrels per day. Today, it’s about 10.2 million barrels per day. In 2008, domestic gas production averaged about 55.1 billion cubic feet per day. Today, it’s about 87.6 billion cubic feet per day. That’s an increase of about 32.5 billion cubic feet per day, which is equivalent to about 5.5 million barrels of oil per day. Thus, over the past decade, US oil and gas output has jumped by about 10.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Let’s compare that to domestic solar and wind production which, since 2008, has increased by 4,800 percent and 450 percent, respectively. While those percentage increases are impressive, the total energy produced from those sources remains small when compared to oil and gas. In 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration, US solar production totaled about 77 terawatt-hours and wind production totaled about 254 terawatt-hours, for a combined total of 331 terawatt-hours. That’s the equivalent of about 1.5 million barrels of oil per day. Simple division (10.5 divided by 1.5) shows that since 2008, the increase in energy production from oil and gas is equal to seven times the energy output of all domestic solar and wind.

That’s an incredible statistic. Consider just how many billions of taxpayer dollars have been thrown at renewable energy projects, and then compare the relatively lackluster results with what the free market has accomplished on its own. As we opined in February, America’s robust energy production is emblematic of the positive developments that occur when onerous regulations are repealed and innovation takes hold. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that prices at the pump will reflect U.S. production. In New York, for example, some drivers are facing $5/gallon gas.

To help explain some of this discrepancy, our own Michael Swartz recently wrote, “While it isn’t as much of a factor on the supply side, OPEC can still be a price driver. In this case, both Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC Russia have put aside their foreign policy differences and enforced an 18-month-long production cut between themselves — a slowdown that has eliminated the supply glut (and low prices) we enjoyed over the last few years. And since those two nations are the second- and third-largest producers of crude oil (trailing only the U.S.), their coalition significantly influences the market.”

But if anything, this should actually encourage the U.S. to pursue oil and gas extraction to an even greater degree. The limit to what energy companies can do here in America has always been underappreciated, so providing a good environment for them to further flourish should be a high priority if our goal is genuine energy independence. The less we have to worry about what OPEC is doing behind the scenes, the better off consumers — and our national security — will be. Based on the numbers alone, wind and solar energy production aren’t going to get us there.

SOURCE





Out Of Sight, Out Of Mines

As a generalization, it’s safe to say that there are few things in this world more odious to an environmentalist than the mining of metals and minerals, except if those activities are conducted in an obscure, faraway place, and if the fruits of those activities bear the cool, sleek moniker of “clean.”

There’s a modern-day “Heart of Darkness” being perpetrated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where tens of thousands of children as young as four are forced to haul rocks to the surface from mines dug by hand as part of a cobalt-mining operation, under conditions that would make Upton Sinclair, or, for that matter, Joseph Conrad, blush.

Last August, the Daily Mail printed an article describing these conditions, where they also reported that each electric car requires an average 15 kg (33 lbs) of cobalt in its batteries.

To give credit where due, according to Benchmark Minerals, Panasonic has enabled Tesla to reduce its cobalt consumption by 60% over the last six years by utilizing nickel-cobalt-aluminum (NCA) technology versus nickel-cobalt-manganese (NCM), which remains the standard for the electric vehicle (E.V.) industry.

Nevertheless, replacement technology for cobalt is still at least ten years out, and the projected “EV surge is far more significant than the reduction of cobalt intensity which is close to its limit[.] … [M]ore cobalt will be needed and the reliance on the Democratic Republic of Congo as the primary supplier [60% of worldwide production] will increase.”

On May 17, 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that “prices of lithium and cobalt more than doubled from 2016 through last year, but the rally has cooled off recently amid worries about oversupply.”

The market responded in typical fashion by ramping up worldwide production (i.e., mining) of lithium and, to a lesser extent, cobalt.  Consumption levels of nickel, manganese, and aluminum are no doubt on the rise as well.

E.V.s and plug-in hybrids are eligible for federal tax credits up to $7,500, depending upon the battery capacity, and most E.V.s are eligible for the maximum amount.  Some states offer additional subsidies.  Colorado is the most generous.  This from Complete Colorado:

Currently those with EV or AFV [Alternative Fuel] vehicles receive up to $20,000 in Colorado income tax credits over and above the $7,500 the federal government already grants.  The credit is based on size and weight of vehicle.  Light passenger vehicles get $5,000, which, unlike most states and the federal credit, can be used as a rebate, and trucks get $7,000-$20,000.

As of 4/18/2018, a bill to repeal this electric vehicle subsidy (S.B. 18-047) was postponed indefinitely by the Colorado House Committee on Transportation and Energy.

All such subsidies should be eliminated.  If we stopped subsidizing electric trucks and buses, for example, we would likely see more conversions of truck and bus fleets to compressed natural gas (CNG), which is cheaper; more efficient; and, I argue, more environmentally desirable than the electric alternative.

All are imperfect, but the market is not the insidious spawn of Darth Vader.  We’re better off if complex, dynamic solutions have to prove their worth by competing on many levels in the real world, as opposed to a having a few masterminds (at the prodding, or shall we say incentivizing, of parties with vested interests) distort the field with edicts from above.

SOURCE




NY Dems’ Anti-Energy Policies Forced New Yorkers To Pay 46 Times More For Power

Natural gas prices in the New York City region skyrocketed in January, costing New Yorkers roughly 46 times more than the 2017 average for the area, according to a Tuesday report from the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA).

Despite neighboring natural gas-rich Pennsylvania, New York residents pay 44 percent more for energy than the national average. A lack of transportation infrastructure between the two states has effectively cut off New Yorkers from a large supply of fuel.

“Spot market prices in the New York City region jumped to a record high of $140.25 for natural gas, as compared to the average natural gas spot market price for New York in 2017 was $3.08,” CEA found. “New Yorkers were subjected to prices that were $137 higher due to self-inflicted capacity constraints created by their own elected officials.”

Due largely to a lack of oil and gas infrastructure, much of New England was forced to rely on imported natural gas from Russia to keep neighborhoods heated during over the winter.

Parts of New England sit on one of the largest deposits of shale oil in the U.S., the Marcellus shale formation that covers parts of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Natural gas makes up a significant part of the energy mix in New York, despite the limits to infrastructure imposed by state officials. More than half of all New York residents heat their homes with natural gas, and the sector supports nearly 200,000 jobs in the state.

“This report highlights the often-overlooked benefits New York’s communities are receiving because of the U.S. energy revolution, enhanced infrastructure, and pipelines,” CEA Mid-Atlantic Director Mike Butler said in a statement.

“However, New York families, businesses, and households will not be able to realize the full potential of these benefits until natural gas plays a larger role in the state to offset intermittency issues and the physical realities of the state’s electric grid.”

SOURCE




Scott Pruitt’s Mission to Make EPA Operate More Efficiently

The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced the creation of an Office of Continuous Improvement to implement a lean management system. It’s part of Administrator Scott Pruitt’s effort to make the EPA—a government agency known for its expansive reach—work more efficiently on behalf of American taxpayers.

EPA Chief of Operations Henry Darwin spoke exclusively to The Daily Signal about the new office and the work that its director, Serena McIlwain, would be doing. A lightly edited transcript of the interview is below.

Rob Bluey: Administrator Scott Pruitt recently announced a new Office of Continuous Improvement at the EPA. Can you tell us what it’s going to do and why it matters?

Henry Darwin: The Office of Continuous Improvement is a group of EPA staff that will be helping me, as the chief of operations, deploy a new management system based upon lean principles. Initially, the vast majority of their time will be spent on deploying the new system, but over time, their time will be spent more so on performing problem solving and process improvements as we identify opportunities under the new management system.

Bluey: Let’s take a step back. What is lean management and how exactly are you applying it at EPA?

Darwin: Lean management is a system that is specifically designed to help identify opportunities for improvement and then to monitor performance to see whether or not there are additional opportunities for improvement. And also to make sure that, as we make improvements, that they’re sustained over time.

Typically what happens with most lean organizations, or organizations who say they’re lean, is they do a series of projects that result in theoretical process improvements. Without a system that is specifically designed to make sure that those processes do in fact improve and that there’s measurement in place to make sure that those processes improve, it’s often the case that those projects are not as successful as they would have otherwise been, had there been a system in place to support them.

Bluey: So how would you say that this is making the EPA operate more efficiently?

Darwin: EPA has a long history of using lean to improve processes. What it was lacking, and what we’re trying to implement for the first time, is a system that helps us identify strategic opportunities for us to use lean to improve our processes.

So whereas the previous administration merely asked or required the programs to perform lean events, we’re actually setting very strategic goals and objectives with high targets and we’re asking the programs and regional offices to meet those targets using lean. And then through the management system, we’re monitoring whether or not those improvements are actually occurring.

If they’re not, then we have the group of people now, the Office of Continuous Improvement, that can come in and analyze as to why those improvements aren’t happening or if there’s additional process improvements using lean that are needed in order to get them to where we want them to be as the administrator that sets forth goals and objectives for the agency.

Bluey: Under the Trump administration, you’ve made it a priority to track permitting, meeting legal deadlines, and correcting environmental violations. What did you find when you first took the job and how have things changed since then?

Darwin: The EPA has a history of measuring very long-term outcomes—outcomes that aren’t measurable on a regular basis. And what they had failed to do and what we’re starting to do is to measure those things that we can measure on a more frequent basis, those things that are important to our customers.

“Just like businesses have investors, we have investors. And our investors expect a return on their investment, which is clean air, clean land, clean water, and safe chemicals.”

Now, there are a lot of people out there that suggest we shouldn’t be calling those who we regulate our customers, but I’m not one of them. I believe that we do and should recognize our regulated community as our customers so we can apply business-related principles to our work.

With that said, we always have to remember that we have investors. Just like businesses have investors, we have investors. And our investors expect a return on their investment, which is clean air, clean land, clean water, and safe chemicals.

We always have to be mindful of the fact that even though we want to be paying attention to our customers’ needs as they get permits or licenses, or we’re working with them to achieve compliance, we also have to remember that our taxpayer investors expect a return on our investment. So we also have to be measuring those outcomes, those mission-related outcome measures, related to clean air, clean land, and safe chemicals.

Bluey: Let’s take permitting, for example. I know it’s something that Administrator Pruitt has talked about. He says that he wants to get permitting down to a certain period of time because in past administrations there was an indefinite period where people just didn’t get an answer, a yes or a no. He wants you to be able to say yes or no. What are some of the goals that you’re trying to do with regard to permitting specifically?

Darwin: When we arrived here in this administration, what we found was that we had heard anecdotally, from our customers, that the permitting process was simply taking too long.

What we also found was that the EPA did not have a system for tracking the amount of time it took to issue permits. So we simply went to the programs that issue permits and asked them for the last six months, how long was it taking for us to issue permits? And what we found was fairly surprising, that in some areas they were as long as three years to issue permits, which is simply unacceptable.

In having conversations with the administrator and talking about what a reasonable target or goal would be initially we agreed, he set the standard, or the goal, for issuing permits within six months. So that’s our goal.

Our goal is to, for every permit that’s directly issued by EPA, our goal is to reduce the amount of time it takes from whatever it is right now, which could be upwards of three years, down to six months.

Henry Darwin, the EPA’s chief of operations, discusses the agency’s lean management system at the announcement of the Office of Continuous Improvement on May 14. (Photo courtesy of EPA)
Bluey: In an interview with The Daily Signal, Administrator Pruitt spoke about what you’re doing as the Darwin Effect, named after you. How did you come to embrace these management principles in your line of work?

Darwin: I’m a lifelong environmental professional. I have 18 years of experience working for a state environmental agency. I became the director of that state environmental agency in Arizona about seven years ago and was the director there for five years. Over the course of my experience there, I found an appreciation for lean and a system that could support lean efforts.

We were able to, in my agency, reduce permitting timeframes on the order of 70 percent, 80 percent, and in some instances, 90 percent using lean principles and as supported by a lean management system. I, after that experience, was asked by the governor of Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey, to do the same lean management system deployment for the entire state.

Over the course of two years, I was in the process of deploying a lean management system in 35 state agencies with 35,000 employees and we were seeing the same types of results. They continue to see those same types of results in Arizona using the same business processes and principles.

Bluey: Like Administrator Pruitt, who was prior to his appointment the attorney general of Oklahoma, you come from state government as well. How would you say that experience, both working in the environmental field and then working as Arizona’s chief of operations, prepared you for the job that you’re doing today?

Darwin: I hope that it did prepare me. But there are some significant differences between state government and the federal government. The federal government, rightly or wrongly so, is a much bigger bureaucracy. So the efforts that we had been undertaking at the state level, although not impossible, is actually more difficult now that we’re here doing this work at the federal level. But with that said, it’s more rewarding.

The zone of influence, or the impact that we are making here, it’s to the benefit of not just a single state but the entire country. So even though it may be more difficult, it’s more rewarding. And I can’t think of a better place to be right now.

Bluey: Can you talk about the reaction to the Office of Continuous Improvement within the agency? And also the lean management system.

Darwin: I’m very fortunate in the fact that before I arrived there was a pretty strong appreciation for what lean could be. With that said, EPA had not found a way of making lean all it could be.

I received a lot of support internally for this idea of bringing a system to EPA that could be used to realize, and bring to life, a lot of those improvement ideas that had been identified under previous administrations.

This is as much about carrying forward the work that had been done previously and bringing discipline to actually executing on the plans and the improvements that had been identified but not necessarily followed through on from previous administrations. It has received a lot of positive feedback, a lot of energy and positive energy around the work that we’re here to do.

Bluey: Who are you going to have directing the new office?

Darwin: The director of the Office of Continuous Improvement is a woman named Serena McIlwain. She comes most recently from a region in San Francisco, Region 9. She has a lot of experience, not only at EPA but also in the federal government. So she can help me navigate some of those bureaucracies.

She was the person at EPA who was probably the biggest proponent of lean. She was actually teaching lean tools and principles from Region 9 to the entire agency. She’s been a fantastic fit so far and I know that she’s going to do a great job.

Serena McIlwain, the EPA’s director of the Office of Continuous Improvement, explains her new role. (Photo courtesy of EPA)
Bluey: As a conservative, I have to ask this because any time government is creating a new office, you might have Americans out there who are skeptical and believe in smaller government. What’s your message to those who say, “How is this going to improve performance and not create more bureaucracy?”

Darwin: As a conservative myself, I would share those concerns or sentiments. What I will say is that even though this is a new office, this is not new employees.

We have not grown the size of the EPA. Those who are performing this work were already EPA employees. We have pulled these staff members and managers from within the agency, so we’re just redirecting them to what I believe to be higher value or more value-added work.

Instead of focusing their efforts on performing lean projects that had questionable or limited results, we’re focusing them on areas where we actually will see results. So they’re actually providing higher value, not only to the EPA but our taxpayer investors.

Bluey: And finally—I’ve posed this question to Administrator Pruitt as well—how do you ensure that the changes you’re making at EPA today last many, many years into the future?

Darwin: A lot of it is institutionalizing the work that I’m doing. And not to get too technical, but there are methods and means by which we can institutionalize the work.

It’s really connected back to your question about pulling people from within the agency. We’re not bringing in a bunch of new people, we’re not bringing in a bunch of consultants to do this work. We’re trying to learn from within EPA. We’re trying to use career staff that have a lot of experience at EPA and have a lot of influence at EPA in order to manage the office, in order to lead the office, but also to staff the office.

Because we want them to believe in the new system, we want them to carry this forward beyond our existence here.

Bluey: Henry, thanks so much for taking the time to speak to The Daily Signal.

Darwin: Thank you.

SOURCE

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