JUNK SCIENCE IS ROGUE SCIENCE: STEVE MILLOY
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=517723
Roguish EPA’s Junk Science Risks Recovery
By STEVE MILLOYPosted 01/11/2010 06:15 PM ET
If you still require proof the Environmental Protection Agency operates without any sort of tethering to reality, you need look no further than its crackdown on smog.
The agency recently proposed to ratchet down the ground-level ozone standard to 0.060 to 0.070 parts per million from the 0.075 ppm level set by the Bush administration and the 0.084 ppm level set by the Clinton administration in 1997.
It alleges that the more stringent stand prevents as many as 12,000 premature deaths per year and thousands of cases of bronchitis, asthma and nonfatal heart attacks — all for the price of $19 billion to $90 billion per year. To make the rule seem like a no-brainer, the EPA values the proposal’s health benefits at $13 billion to $100 billion per year.
What’s not to like — cleaner air, healthier people and a potentially greater GDP to boot!
The EPA points to a slew of studies to back up its proposal, but the scientific and economic reality of the proposal is far different. There is no body of systematically collected and scientifically analyzed data showing ambient levels of smog in the U.S. are the primary cause of a substantial or even detectable number of significant health effects.
To the extent the EPA points to published studies it claims support its proposal, these studies invariably involve cherry-picked data that have been statistically tortured to produce dubious, if not suspicious results — these studies tend to emanate from EPA-funded researchers. Imagine a police department that was also judge and jury.
And this is not just true of this EPA proposal; it was true of the Clinton-era smog rules that were then promulgated only because then-EPA administrator and now-Obama environment czar Carol Browner rammed them through even over the qualms of then-Vice President Al Gore. When Congress tried to intervene by asking for the raw data underlying EPA’s health claims, Browner brazenly refused to provide them.
The EPA’s calculation of the supposed benefits of its ozone rule is equally dubious. Although the cardiac and respiratory health effects in question are of complex nature and origin, the EPA just assumes that they are all due to smog.
Further, for every death that the EPA assumes to be caused by smog, it values the life lost at $5 million, regardless of whether the death was of a 40-year-old or a 90-year-old. There’s no court of law that would allow such a valuation of life in a wrongful death action, but benefit exaggeration is necessary when the cost of compliance is on the order of $100 billion.
Unlike the alleged benefits of regulation, the costs are likely underestimated, but not for the reason you might think. Yes, it’s difficult and expensive to comply with EPA air-quality standards. Of the 675 counties that monitor for ozone, 322 are out of compliance with the current standard promulgated by the Bush administration EPA.
But the real cost lies only partially in the installation of air emissions technology in industrial facilities and autos. The larger but hidden costs are those that are borne by a nation that forgoes economic development in order to meet EPA standards.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has the power to withhold federal highway funds from states that fail to comply with federal air-quality standards. Sadly, many state governments would rather have federal highway dollars in their pockets than the long-term economic benefits of local industrial development. Governments overlook the fact such development adds to the tax base.
Even when this shortsightedness occurs on a local level, it can have tremendous national impact.
The reason that gasoline prices spike everywhere when hurricanes roar through the refinery-rich Gulf of Mexico region is because U.S. refiners operate at or near demand levels. Any disturbance in that production and gasoline prices necessarily spike, since demand is constant.
A major factor for the lack of spare capacity is that EPA regulation forces highway-fund-hungry states to impose steep emissions limits on refinery operations. These limits are so expensive that they dissuade investment in new and expanded refineries.
No one knows for sure what the cost is of forgone economic activity, but it is likely much greater than mere air-quality compliance costs and the EPA’s overvaluation of imaginary benefits.
Amid the worst economic environment in more than 70 years, the rogue EPA threatens any near-term recovery and future growth not only with its new ozone proposal but with its recent junk-science-fueled decision to classify carbon dioxide as a threat to public welfare. Adding insult to injury, neither regulation will produce gains in public health or environmental quality.
Since neither the Obama administration nor the Democrat-controlled Congress will do anything about the EPA, voters will have to take action themselves starting this year.
• 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.”
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