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Editorial Cleaner Fuels, Cleaner Cars
Published: April 4, 2012
In late December, the Environmental Protection Agency drafted a set of rules that would force petroleum refiners to reduce the amount of sulfur in gasoline by two-thirds. That change would enhance the effectiveness of catalytic converters in both old and new cars, resulting in substantial cuts in soot and smog-forming pollutants from automobile tailpipes.
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From what I read about DDT, Rachel Carson never advocated banning DDT but did advocate using as little as possible because insects become resistant to DDT and eventually it wouldn't be effective, while still killing birds.
I have come up with zero research stating that DDT has no negative effect upon the environment.
Pretty good comment.
Look up Roberts, Manguin, and Mouchet (2000, 33) concerning the research.
Also, here is a brief cited commentary on the court case at the time, the ruling against banning, and the overrule by the newly head of the EPA who admitted the EPA is not a scientific based organization, but a politically driven one.
In 1971, when the anti-DDT campaign was taken right up to the US Federal Court, it looked like evidence-based science would hold out against increasing popular alarm. After a comprehensive hearing of the evidence in a case brought by the Environment Defence Fund (EDF), and in the face of enormous public and political pressure, the Hearing Examiner, Edmund Sweeney, found only limited endangerment to humans and wildlife by excessive use of DDT, and so recommended against a full ban on its use [40 CFR 164.32].
However, this decision was summarily over-ruled just two months later by the first head of the newly formed EPA, William Ruckelshaus, in a decision that gave every indication there was little regard to the evidence. In fact, it even went against Ruckelshaus’ own testimony two years earlier. In a case brought by EDF in 1970, just before he took leadership of the newly constituted EPA, Ruckelshaus testified that DDT is not endangering the Public Health…
To the contrary, DDT is an indispensable weapon in the arsenal of substances used to protect human health and has an amazing and exemplary record of safe use. . . . DDT, when properly used at recommended concentrations, does not cause a toxic response in man or other mammals and is not harmful. [EDF v. Hardin, 1970]
Later Ruckelshaus famously admitted, in correspondence with the president of the Farm Bureau, that the EPA decisions involvingthe use of toxic substances are not scientific but political, indeed science…has a role to play but the ultimate judgement remains political (to D Grant, 26 Apr 1979). Ruckelshaus, an attorney and civil servant, approached his decision-making as an attorney with attention to the political implication, and his leadership set the pattern for the EPA – for the next 3 decades his successors were attorneys, with many of their decisions notable for their remoteness from the science and even the views of their own scientists.
Seriously, there is a ton of information out there on this.
Not only that, but the ban on DDT is one of the biggest influencing factors of the return of malaria. You can even look up the wide objections to its ban concerning that.
The point is, the EPA has admitted from the start that they are a politically motivated and actuated organization to which bases its positions on that politics, not science.
That is simply one of the EPA many "political" focuses on issues. You can go back to the ETS classification as a toxin and see they have little regard for science as they manipulated confidence intervals to reach their conclusions (to which was thrown out by the courts). Their current C02 findings are just as weak and groundless, but again... this is politically focused and motivated.
The EPA is a blemish on science, it is nothing more than a political activist group.
See, I don't trust what the EPA says. They pushed hard for ethanol in fuel and it is the worst thing you can do to an engine. Not to mention, its intent has had no measurable effect. Add in the fact that its use has resulted in an increase of food prices and yet again you see a change that has no tangible benefit to its focus and negative impacts on society.
The problem with the EPA, as I mentioned in a previous post is they do not base their positions on any validated scientific grounds.
Now don't get me wrong, it would be wonderful if their claims were true, but look at their "science" and you see nothing more than flawed assumptions.
Also, Rachel Carson didn't do a study on DDT. She wrote a popular science book called Silent Spring. This book was about how pesticides move through the environment. She talked about the concept of bioaccumulation to explain how pesticides could hurt predator bird species. She, herself, was a marine biologist. Her writing is very eloquent and effective.
She was dying of cancer, possibly from pesticides, while testifying before Congress (the testimonies that later led to the creation of NEPA (which created the EPA), the ESA and the Clean Air Act). However, because people were so biased against female scientists, she didn't let the public know she had cancer, lest this fact deter from her testimony. She didn't want people making wild, false accusations about her motives.
Sadly, she's been dead for almost 50 years and people are still making these wild, false accusations. .
Her book was presented as evidence of such. Like many politically driven issues, they grab what is nothing more than speculated means and then carry it as a banner of fact.
As for the bold, that is rather tasteless. Making speculations as to the cause of her cancer for your own political benefit? Shameless.
(B) the health effects of mercury are poorly understood and difficult to measure; environmental cost/benefit analyses are notoriously poor, and I don't take them as gospel, even from the EPA. For example, what you call "the Harvard study", has 230 instances of the word, "Assume" or "assumption."
Which is why you do not make policy when you do not understand what the issue is.
As has been mentioned, their goals have no measurable effect, yet they do lend to increased costs in the industry to which will have negative impacts on the market.
The EPA is notorious for weak claims founded on poorly applied science to promote changes which do more harm to our economic and societal structures while never meeting any tangible benefit from their change.
This is why if we can not establish the facts and the issue is not of any significant aspect (as was noted concerning the US and coal production), then making these changes serve no purpose other than to promote political position.
Which is why you do not make policy when you do not understand what the issue is.
Exactly. We have a policy of allowing power plants to emit mercury into the public air and water, without a good knowledge of what the health effects are.
Therefore we should not allow power plants to emit any mercury into public air and water, until energy companies have proven that there are no negative health effects.
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As has been mentioned, their goals have no measurable effect
It isn't that they have no measurable effect, it is that they do not have a widely agreed upon effect.
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The EPA is notorious for weak claims founded on poorly applied science to promote changes which do more harm to our economic and societal structures while never meeting any tangible benefit from their change.
As far as I'm concerned, the burden of proof is on the energy firms to prove that mercury has no effect on humans. The EPA doesn't have to prove a damn thing.
That's where I differ from all these conservatives - I don't start with the assumption that a power company has the RIGHT to dump its waste products into public air and water.
Therefore we should not allow power plants to emit any mercury into public air and water, until energy companies have proven that there are no negative health effects.
But again leroi this goes back to my analogy, you have a fire burning outside your house with the windows open. You're trying to fix the issue by putting out the fire in your fireplace. Unless you address the fire outside your house you're not accomplishing much at all if anything.
Let's look at another angle, say we take your approach and make power plants mercury free. What's going t happen then? Power costs will increase dramatically driving more manufacturing overseas increasing mercury emissions. Your approach could in fact have a worse effect. If you're going to address mercury emissions it has to be done globally.
But again leroi this goes back to my analogy, you have a fire burning outside your house with the windows open.
I'm not seeing how that's a fitting analogy.
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Let's look at another angle, say we take your approach and make power plants mercury free. What's going t happen then? Power costs will increase dramatically driving more manufacturing overseas...
Which is fine. Manufacturing is declining as a source of mass employment for Americans , anyway. As productivity increases, manufacturing becomes increasingly irrelevant as a driver of economic growth.
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...increasing mercury emissions. Your approach could in fact have a worse effect. If you're going to address mercury emissions it has to be done globally.
No, not necessarily. It would increase domestic energy prices, which makes new energy technologies more economical as an investment. Those new investments will drive the economy, eventually be adopted by the aforementioned foreign nations.
Your argument is pointless to me anyway, because the quality of air and water and my personal health is more important than some other guy's capital gains from manufacturing.
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