This weekly newsletter, focused on environmental issues, highlights relevant analysis done by the John Locke Foundation and other think tanks, as well as items in the news.
1. Willie Soon and Paul Driessen on "The Myth of Killer Mercury"
Harvard scientist Willie Soon and Center for a Constructive Tomorrow analyst Paul Driessen had an excellent article in the May 25 Wall Street Journal. The authors argued that, in setting new standards for mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, the EPA ignored the science in order to pursue their agenda of punishing the use of coal and other carbon-based fuels.
According to Soon and Driessen, "to build its case against mercury, the EPA systematically ignored evidence and clinical studies that contradict its regulatory agenda, which is to punish hydrocarbon use." The authors state that:
According to the Centers for Disease Control’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which actively monitors mercury exposure, blood mercury counts for U.S. women and children decreased steadily from 1999-2008, placing today’s counts well below the already excessively safe level established by the EPA. A 17-year evaluation of mercury risk to babies and children by the Seychelles Children Development Study found "no measurable cognitive or behavioral effects" in children who eat several servings of ocean fish every week, much more than most Americans do.
The World Health Organization and U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry assessed these findings in setting mercury-risk standards that are two to three times less restrictive than the EPA’s."
In other words, the EPA is bypassing research from both the Centers for Disease Control and the World Heal Organization suggesting that its stringent new controls, costing utilities, and ultimately electricity customers, nearly $11 billion annually, are not justified. I guess that the Obama administration sees no price that is too high to impose on the American people in order to achieve its radical environmentalist agenda.
2. Wind is a renewable energy source except when it doesn’t renew
The headline in the UK Telegraph from May 29 reads "Wind Farms: Britain is Running out of Wind." Apparently, the UK, which has invested a great deal in subsidizing wind power, is facing a problem. The last couple years have been very calm (windwise), and meteorologists are predicting the same for the next 40 or so years. According to the article,
More than 3,600 turbines are expected to be installed in offshore wind farms over the next nine years. But statistics suggest that the winds that sweep across the British Isles may be weakening. Last year, wind speeds over the UK averaged 7.8 knots (8.9mph), a fall of 20 per cent on 2008, and well below the mean for this century, which stands at 9.1 knots (10.5mph).
Now if all this investment in wind energy was being paid for by private entrepreneurs, which of course it is not, one would expect to see a rational response to this news — that is, a disinvestment in wind and a shift to something allegedly less renewable, but way more reliable, like coal or natural gas. But of course this is all government subsidized, so a rational response is probably completely off the table.
(Hat tip to my colleague Jon Sanders for calling my attention to this article.)
3. Ozone Report
Each week during the summer ozone season this newsletter will report how many, if any, high-ozone days had been experienced throughout the state during the previous week, where they were experienced, and how many have been recorded during the entire season to date. The ozone season began on April 1 and ends October 31. All reported data are from the North Carolina Division of Air Quality, which is part of the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
During the period from May 23 through May 29, there were no reported high-ozone readings on any of the state’s monitors. There have been no reported high-ozone readings in North Carolina thus far this season, in spite of the fact that Code Orange alerts have been issued and reported in the media across the state on several different occasions. In other words, all alerts thus far have turned out to be false alarms. Unfortunately, such false alarms are never reported to the public after the fact.
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