Month: November 2015

Clean Power Rule Is a Corrupt, Health-Damaging Power-Rationing Rule, Says Physicians for Civil Defense

The so-called Clean Power Rule (CPP) being imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires cutting “carbon” emissions and will result in shuttering many coal-fired electrical generating stations. This is said to produce climate benefits by reducing atmospheric CO2, and health benefits by reducing small particulates (“PM2.5s”), as in soot and diesel exhaust.

Last week’s ruling from Judge Hollis Hill of the King County Superior Court in Seattle, Washington, is said to be a landmark precedent for the government’s authority to impose such rules. The court held for eight child petitioners, one of whom said, “we have a right to a healthy atmosphere, and the government can’t allow it to be harmed.” Continue reading “Clean Power Rule Is a Corrupt, Health-Damaging Power-Rationing Rule, Says Physicians for Civil Defense”

Banning Dust

Civil Defense Perspectives July 2015 Vol 31 No 5 [published Nov 30, 2015]

Claiming a “climate emergency” caused by atmospheric CO2,  the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is trying to impose the “Clean Power” Rule, which is supposed to save tens of thousands of lives because of decreasing “carbon”—not the life-giving gas but the elemental form, soot, that comes in small particulates less than 2.5 microns in size (PM2.5s). It happens that coal-fired electrical generating stations emit PM2.5s, as well as CO2, and health harm is said to come from the particle size, regardless of composition or source. It could be soot, diesel exhaust, or dust from storms or agriculture.

The reductio ad absurdum, used so brilliantly by 18th-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat, does not work well today, so accustomed are we, like the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass, to believing six impossible things before breakfast—as long as propounded by government-approved “scientists.” Continue reading “Banning Dust”

Russian Military Spending Surges as Revived Civil Defense Training Called for, Says PCD

Last week, Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s deputy prime minister in charge of the defense industry, called for reviving the old Cold War practice of training civilians on how to respond in the event of a large-scale nuclear attack. Recreating civil defense would mean that the population “could avoid colossal losses” if “subject to that kind of aggression.”

During the Cold War, Russia built—and still has—an extensive system of bomb shelters. Compulsory civil defense training for the population, including schoolchildren, was discontinued under Gorbachev. Continue reading “Russian Military Spending Surges as Revived Civil Defense Training Called for, Says PCD”