The Media Is Obsessed With Bad News.  Years ago, the Natural Resources Defense Council claimed the chemical Alar, which helps keep apples from rotting, killed kids.  When "60 Minutes" ran the story, I believed it.  So did lots of people.  Schools across America banned apples.  Moms poured out apple juice.  Apple growers lost billions.  But the scare was bunk.  Apples, even apples with Alar, are good for you.  Since banning Alar meant apples decay more quickly, apples become slightly more expensive, and that meant some kids ate less healthy food.

The EPA: The Worst Of Many Rogue Federal Agencies.  The EPA has ignored epidemiological evidence to foment false alarms about the dangers of ozone, radon, Alar (used in apple orchards), dioxins, and asbestos.  The asbestos story is illustrative.  Not only did the EPA, in 1989, decree an eight-year phase-out of asbestos despite studies from Oxford, Harvard, the Canadian Royal commission, New Jersey, etc. that the health risks posed by asbestos-lined buildings were miniscule, EPA's administrators even ignored the EPA's own scientific panel, which denounced the study used to justify the ban on asbestos as "unconvincing," "scientifically unappealing," and "absurd."

The New York Times and Lies about 'Acid Rain'.  [Scroll down]  However, as scientists took measurements and assessed the streams, lakes and forests that supposedly were being ravaged by acid rain, they found out a number of things.  First, lake and stream acidity had very little relationship to the pH factor of local rainfall.  Instead, the acidity of the vegetation in the watersheds of these aquatic bodies was the significant factor, with the science firmly established by the time that Edward Krug and Charles Frink published a paper in a 1983 edition of Science.

The Growing Tyranny of the Political Elite.  For hundreds of years, human beings have used lead for many purposes, and life on earth has not exactly come to an end.  Now we are told that the lead used in hunting and fishing is harming animals and fish, and it may just have to stop.  The scary thing is that one individual, an appointed bureaucrat directing the Environmental Protection Agency, has the power to impose such a ban. [...] And the EPA believes that it has the authority not just to police hunting and fishing supplies, but to regulate carbon dioxide, a natural product of the act of breathing.  The preferred modus operandi, in fact, is to appoint a single individual with the power to control some large part of American life.

The EPA's RRP Rule isn't About Safety.  On April 22, 2010 an EPA regulation governing renovation, repair, and painting (RRP) took effect.  The regulation governs any activity that will disturb paint containing lead and applies to all homes built before 1978 and "child-occupied facilities". [...] But combating lead poisoning is not a proper function of government.  And RRP is going to do little, if anything, to combat it.  It will however, grant the government greater control over the lives of contractors and cost consumers a lot of money.

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2013 by Andrew K. Dart

A useful pipeline spill in Arkansas.  The environmentalists who were waging a losing war against the proposed Keystone pipeline woke up to the news of a small pipeline leak in Arkansas and thought it was Christmas morning.  If environmentalists were the praying kind, they would say the Arkansas leak was an answer to their prayers.  They think it ends the debate over the Keystone pipeline.

The Editor says...
Sometimes pipes leak, but railroad cars leak more often.  The ocean floor leaks oil continuously.

Peak Oil Cult Is Proved Spectacularly Wrong.  In December, U.S. oil exports hit a record of 3.6 million barrels per day, thanks in part to soaring domestic petroleum production.  Last year, domestic natural gas production averaged 69 billion cubic feet per day, a record, and a 33% increase over the levels achieved back in 2005.  That year, Lee Raymond, the famously combative former CEO of ExxonMobil, declared that "gas production has peaked in North America."

How Fossil Fuels Saved Humanity from Nature and Nature from Humanity.  Nothing can be made, transported, or used without energy, and fossil fuels provide 80 percent of mankind's energy and 60 percent of its food and clothing.  Thus, absent fossil fuels, global cropland would have to increase by 150 percent to meet current food demand, but conversion of habitat to cropland is already the greatest threat to biodiversity.  By lowering humanity's reliance on living nature, fossil fuels not only saved humanity from nature's whims, but nature from humanity's demands.

The inconvenient truth about GM.  [Scroll down]  Early indications are that this could increase wheat yields by a dramatic 30 per cent.  The National Farmers' Union president, Peter Kendall, describes the potential as "just enormous".  And it is indeed the sort of breakthrough we desperately need, since — in little more than 35 years — the world will have to increase food production by a challenging 70 per cent if it is to feed its growing population.

Creation of new 'superwheat' grain hailed as biggest advance in farming in a generation.  A 'superwheat' created by British scientists could increase crop yields by up to a third.  In one of the biggest potential advances for farming in a generation, researchers have cross-bred modern wheat seed with ancient wild grass species to produce a more resilient, productive crop.  Researchers at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) said the new 'superwheat' could be combined with current varieties to boost drought tolerance, disease resistance, as well as their yield.

Benefits of Bt corn go beyond rootworm resistance.  Engineered to produce the bacterial toxin, Bt, "Bt corn" resists attack by corn rootworm, a pest that feeds on roots and can cause annual losses of up to $1 billion.  But besides merely protecting against these losses, the Bt trait has also boosted corn yields, in some cases beyond normal expectations.

A Golden Rice Opportunity.  Finally, after 12 years of delay caused by opponents of genetically modified (GM) foods, so-called "golden rice" with vitamin A will be grown in the Philippines.  Over those 12 years, about eight million children worldwide died from vitamin A deficiency.  Are anti-GM advocates not partly responsible?

Environmentalism and Human Sacrifice.  "Golden rice" contains vitamin A, making it by far the most effective and cheapest way to get vitamin A into Third World children.  So who would oppose something that could save millions of children's lives and millions of other children from blindness?  The answer is people who are more devoted to nature than to human life.  And who might such people be?  They are called environmentalists.

The Deadly Opposition to Genetically Modified Food.  Finally, after a 12-year delay caused by opponents of genetically modified foods, so-called "golden rice" with vitamin A will be grown in the Philippines.  Over those 12 years, about 8 million children worldwide died from vitamin A deficiency.  Are anti-GM advocates not partly responsible?

The Media Is Obsessed With Bad News.  GM means "genetically modified," which means scientists add genes, altering the plant's DNA, in this case to make the crop resistant to pests.  Last week, Poland joined seven other European countries in banning cultivation of GM foods.  The politicians acted because headlines screamed about how GM foods caused huge tumors in rats. [...] What the headlines don't tell you, though, is that the female Sprague-Dawley rats used in the test usually develop tumors -- 87 to 96 percent of the time.

An environmentalist's confession — I was wrong about genetically modified crops.  For the record, here and upfront, I apologize for having spent several years ripping up [genetically modified] GM crops.  I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.  As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path.  I now regret it completely.

Save the Whales, Forget the Children.  Greenpeace's war on Golden Rice ignores science in the name of misguided activism.

EPA: Green Gone Wild.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to vastly expand its power.  Last year, the agency paid nearly $700,000 to the National Academy of Sciences to draft the document "Sustainability and the U.S. EPA."  This manifesto rationalizes why the EPA has the right to regulate every business, community and ecosystem in the country.  The key to the EPA's regulatory control is " sustainability," an illusive and ill-defined term even more broadly applicable than the interstate commerce clause.

National Heritage Sites and Agenda 21.  In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, how many single-family homes damaged by the storm surge will be rebuilt as high density dwellings?  This is after all, the Smart Growth trend across the country — destroy traditional homes in the suburbs because they are "unsustainable" and build high rises in inner cities.

Killing Animals to Save Animals: A Conundrum.  In the 1990s, E. O. Wilson [...] popularized various numbers ranging from 4,000 to 100,000 species a year being lost, and these numbers were repeated over and over again in environmental groups' fund raising literature, in congressional testimony, and in speeches by Al Gore (who in 1993 said that 'one-half of all species' could disappear in our lifetime), apparently an extrapolation of Wilson's pronouncement, reports Stephen Budiansky.  Yet, after more than 90 percent of the Atlantic coastal forests of Brazil were cut down, mostly in the 19th century, the actual number of animal extinctions has been zero, even though many of the Brazilian species are highly endemic, found nowhere else in the world.

Earth Day Lesson: Environment is not Climate.  In China the demand for electricity is so great that coal is burned very inefficiently, without any controls, and the air makes Los Angeles of the 1950s look good.  Of the ten most air-polluted cities in the world, eight are in China.  India likewise needs to clean up.  It's easy for Americans to criticize, but they're sacrificing air quality to get faster economic growth.

The EPA can no longer justify its existence.
EPA: Hiding One's Light Under a Bushel.  In 1970 [when the EPA was created,] 31 million tons of sulphur dioxide, a prime contributor to smog, was emitted into the atmosphere.  In 2008 it was 11 million tons.  In 1970 34 million tons of volatile organic compounds were emitted.  In 2008 it was 16 million.  In 1970 204 million tons of carbon monoxide; in 2008 it was 72 million.  The EPA recently declared carbon dioxide a pollutant (which means we pollute the atmosphere every time we exhale).  And the only major country in the world where carbon dioxide emissions are declining?  The United States.  We emitted less CO2 in 2012 than in 1992.  Water pollution has similarly abated.  Unhealthy air days in major U.S. cities these days are a rarity.  Even Los Angeles had only 18 in all of 2011.  Manhattan had exactly none.

Oil industry, lawmakers say EPA fuel rule would hike prices at the pump.  The proposal, released Friday morning [3/29/2013], aims to reduce sulfur in gasoline by more than 60 percent in 2017.  The agency claimed the change would save lives and cut down significantly on respiratory ailments by making the air cleaner.  But critics questioned those claims, and said the plan would impose higher gas prices on hard-hit families.

The Editor says...
The amount of sulphur dioxide in the air is about one third of the levels experienced in 1970 — when there were less than half as many vehicles on the road.*  In 2011, there were 244,778,179 vehicle registrations.*  In 1970, there were 108,407,306 vehicles on the roads in the U.S.*  It is therefore safe to conclude that sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere isn't killing anybody — and thus any claims that the new EPA regulations "would save lives" are specious.  The purpose of this new regulation is to justify the EPA's existence and to turn the screws a little tighter on "big oil."

Chinese air episode exposes EPA fraud on PM 2.5 levels.  According to EPA risk estimates, the day the PM2.5 level spiked to 886 micrograms per cubic meter, the daily death toll should have increased to about 518 deaths — that is, if what the EPA says about PM2.5 is true.  Thus far, however, there is no evidence from China that the EPA's claims about PM2.5 are anywhere close to being true.  The Chinese media have reported on four deaths related to the current air pollution crisis.  Two Chinese boys were reportedly killed in a train accident caused by visibility problems.  Two other people were apparently killed in a car accident, again caused by visibility problems.  Yet there are no reports of a spike in deaths caused by breathing the heavily polluted air.

An Imaginary Dustup? The Incalculable Harm of Regulation.  [Scroll down]  If you operate a grain elevator in St. Joseph, Missouri, or a fertilizer business in my home town, what incentive do you have to grow, to expand, to invest?  You're on notice that you are dangerous, that your activities are a threat to others.  If you are that fertilizer dealer, you've also learned something else.  You've learned to be extremely cynical about the whole enterprise.

China air pollution "beyond index".  According to the government monitoring, levels of PM2.5 particles were above 700 micrograms per cubic meter on Saturday [2/9/2013], and declined by Monday to levels around 350 micrograms — but still way above the World Health Organization's safety levels of 25.

The Cost of Obama's Regulatory Explosion.  [Scroll down]  Of course, the Obama White House fancifully contends that, in addition to costing colossal sums of money, its regulations also save colossal sums of money.  But only the truly credulous could believe this is true — or that there's any accurate way to quantify the "savings" that would ensue from, say, cleaner air (to the extent that these regulations even legitimately advance such goals).

China's bad air puts the lie to EPA scare tactics.  In scientific documents, the EPA has repeatedly concluded that any exposure to PM2.5 can kill, and it can kill people within hours or days of inhalation.  The EPA has estimated that every 10 microgram-per-cubic-meter increase in PM2.5 increases daily death rates by about 1 percent.  That rate is asserted to be higher for vulnerable subpopulations like the elderly or sick.  What should all this mean for China?  On the worst day so far of the ongoing Chinese air pollution event, Beijing's PM2.5 levels peaked at 886 micrograms per cubic meter — an incredible 89 times greater than the U.S. daily average.  Based on EPA risk estimates, we should expect the daily death toll in Beijing to have skyrocketed by 89 percent on a same-day and next-day basis.  Remember that PM2.5 essentially causes "sudden death," according to the EPA.

Obama's Second Term Regulations That Will Destroy America.  Although President Obama previously admitted that the "regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty" of tightening an existing ozone standard would harm jobs and the economy, he still pointed to the fact that it will be reconsidered in 2013.  EPA itself estimated that this would cost $90 billion a year.  Other studies project that the rule could cost upwards of a trillion dollars and destroy 7.4 million jobs, and put 650 additional counties into a category of "non-attainment".  This is the equivalent of posting a "closed for business" sign on communities which will suffer from severe business and job losses resulting from large numbers of plant closures.

EPA's statistics not science, but nonsense.  The scientific and medical reality is that ambient air pollution — even as grimy, stinky, eye-watering and ugly as it is in China — does not kill or hasten death.  Fine particulate matter was such a public health problem, in fact, that no one knew about it until EPA-funded researchers invented it in 1993 — 30 years after the Clean Air Act was enacted.  Since the Clinton administration, the agency has been using its invention to impose billions and billions of dollars of costs on our economy in return for the entirely imaginary benefit of tens of thousands of lives saved annually.

What's EPA smoking?  As reported in an October 2003 study published in the American Medical Association's Archives of Internal Medicine, the risk of sudden death among those who smoked as long as 10 years was zero.  If you can smoke for 10 years and have zero chance of sudden death, you can breathe average U.S. air for thousands of years with zero risk of sudden death.  Given that the "worst" U.S. air has, perhaps, twice the level of PM2.5 as average U.S. air, you even could breathe the "worst" U.S. air for thousands of years with zero risk of sudden death.  Therefore, the EPA's claim that PM2.5 is killing people and the nation stands to reap billion of dollars' worth of health benefits from its new rule are without merit.

EPA Sued Over Heinous Experiments on Humans.  After accumulating evidence via the Freedom of Information Act that showed the Environmental Protection Agency conducted disturbing experiments that exposed humans to inhalable particulates the agency has said are deadly, sound science advocate Steven Milloy has sued the federal government.

Gov't: Food allergies may be disability under law.  The Justice Department said in a recent settlement with a Massachusetts college that severe food allergies can be considered a disability under the law.

BPA Replacement Faces the Same Attacks as BPA.  Anti-chemical activists claim Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical providing strength and flexibility to plastic products, poses threats to human health.  The activists point to studies showing rats develop health complications when continuously fed mega-doses of BPA.  Scientists report, however, that humans do not ingest nearly enough BPA to pose a threat to human health.  Clinical tests and observational studies confirm the scientists' reports.

New York City's Imperial Mayor Bloomberg Bans Again.  Still pulsing with the power from outlawing big servings of sweet drinks, Michael Bloomberg now wants to run Styrofoam out of his city.  Clearly, he believes that everyone has to live exactly as he wants them to live.  During Thursday's State of the City address, New York Mayor Bloomberg called for a ban on Styrofoam food packaging.  It's all a part of his crusade to eliminate smoking, sugary drinks, salt and other items he doesn't like — and, hence, thinks no one else should have.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg Calling For Styrofoam Ban.  When I sit here lamenting living in the blue state of New York, I take a little solace in knowing that at least I don't live in New York City and I don't have to put up with that tyrant of a Mayor, Michael Bloomberg.  Not only is he telling people what they can eat and drink, now he's going after food and beverage containers.

City considers ban on Styrofoam cups and containers.  First he dictated the size of our cups — now he wants to ban what they're made of.  The Bloomberg administration is considering banning Styrofoam cups and containers — popular at thousands of delis and food carts across the city -- as it prepares to roll out a major recycling announcement in the coming weeks, a Sanitation Department official said yesterday [2/6/2013].

Bees, pesticides, more green lies.  [Scroll down]  Various neonicotinoids are widely used in Canada to protect its vast canola fields, and Canadian bee populations are thriving, notes science writer Jon Entine.  Varroa-free Australia is likewise one of the world's prime users of these pesticides, and its bee colonies are among the planet's healthiest.  By contrast, bee populations have been severely impacted by Varroa mites in areas of Switzerland where neonics are not used.  Multiple studies point to still other factors that explain why bees are struggling.  They include bees developing resistance to antibiotics, funguses like Nosema, multiple bee viruses and parasites, bacterial infections like foulbrood, exposure to commonly used organophosphates, bee habitat loss, and even long-term bee inbreeding and resultant lack of genetic diversity.

Rachel Was Wrong.  This year marks the 50th anniversary of biologist Rachel Carson's 1962 book, Silent Spring, which argued that man-made chemicals represented a grave threat to human health and the environment. [...] History has proven Carson's claims wrong.  Contrary to her admonitions, a chemically caused cancer epidemic never came to pass.  Researchers who identified environmental factors did not simply target trace chemical exposures as significant, but instead focused on major cancer causes such as tobacco and poor diets.  In fact, people are living longer and healthier lives, cancer rates have declined even as chemical use has increased, and chemicals are not among the key causes of cancer.