Civil Defense Perspectives 33(3): May 2018
On Apr 24, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt signed proposed rules requiring that the scientific information relied on by the agency be publicly available in a manner sufficient for independent validation.
“The era of secret science at EPA is coming to an end,” said Pruitt. “The ability to test, authenticate, and reproduce scientific findings is vital for the integrity of rulemaking process. Americans deserve to assess the legitimacy of the science underpinning EPA decisions that may impact their lives” (TWTW 4/28/18, https://tinyurl.com/ybymshv5).
The rule “is in line with the scientific community’s moves toward increased data sharing to address the ‘replication crisis’—a growing recognition that a significant proportion of published research may not be reproducible. [It] is consistent with data access requirements for major scientific journals like Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” (ibid.)
In The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science, David Randall and Christopher Welser cite outright fraud, as with microplastics (see p 2) and low-dose radiation. More common is the misuse of statistics to “find” spurious correlations. There is a premium on positive results, and groupthink and absence of openness hinder efforts to check results (https://tinyurl.com/y9tcybv6).
In the Afterword, physicist William Happer lists characteristics of “pathological science”: 1. The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause. 2. The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; or, many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results. 3. Claims of great accuracy. 4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience. 5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.
EPA claims about small particulates (PM2.5) are an excellent example (CDP May 2002, Nov 2012, and July 2014, and 2017 talks by Robert Phalen, John Dale Dunn, James Enstrom, and Steve Milloy; on youtube.com, search DDPmeetings).
A “Fundamental Transformation”?
Under Obama, EPA rammed through an average 565 new rules per year, with the highest regulatory costs of any agency. It gamed cost-benefit analysis by introducing “social costs” and “social benefits.” These included speculation about how inaction would affect everything from sea levels to pediatric asthma. Before issuing the Clean Power Plan, the Obama EPA suddenly raised the global social cost of carbon emissions from $21 to $36 per ton, and in imposing new oil and gas regulations set the cost of methane at $1,100 per ton. When the Trump EPA recalculated, using only demonstrable domestic benefits, the cost estimates dropped to $5 per ton of carbon and $150 per ton of methane. This changed the claimed net benefit of the Clean Power Plan from $40 billion to a net cost of $13 billion (WSJ 6/6/18).
The new rule might also allow EPA to move away from the default use of the corrupt and scientifically flawed linear no-threshold rule (LNT) for cancer risk assessment, writes Edward Calabrese (InsideEPA 6/26/18).
Congress and Courts Seek Transparency
Another front in the war for integrity is congressional scrutiny of research funding. Four Senators—Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), and Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.)—are demanding an investigation of $4 million National Science Foundation grant to Climate Central to “educate” 500 TV weathercasters to report on “climate change.” The senators say the program “is not science—it is propagandizing.” The NSF is supposed to fund basic research, not political or social advocacy (https://tinyurl.com/y8rzzn9c).
An Arizona appellate court has finally ordered the University of Arizona to hand over public records that would expose the genesis of what some consider the most influential scientific publication of the 1990s, the Mann-Bradley-Hughes temperature reconstruction that looks like a hockey stick—1,763 days, three trips to appellate court, and two bankers’ boxes full of legal briefs after a case was filed by the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic (https://tinyurl.com/y9ecyz2r).
The Establishment Strikes Back
The proposed rule came under immediate attack from Democrats, radical environmentalists, the American Lung Association, Science, Nature, and many others. One claim was breach of patient confidentiality, despite safeguards in the rule. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) pointed out the irony, given the government’s demand for ever more patient data: the government’s view on transparency depends on whether it’s their data or your data (https://tinyurl.com/y73x8reo).
“Like tobacco lobbyists and climate-change deniers, the [EPA] is co-opting scientific trappings to sow doubt,” writes science historian Naomi Oreskes (https://tinyurl.com/y7rl2vvc).
In the JAMA Forum, authors from Harvard claim that “the Trump Environmental Agenda May Lead to 80000 Extra Deaths per Decade,” most importantly from rolling back Clean Power Plan rules for PM2.5 (JAMA 6/12/18).
The Center for American Progress, a “progressive” advocacy group founded by John Podesta, asserts that “Pruitt’s actions on energy and the environment threaten to harm women’s health and reproductive justice.” Exposure to PM2.5 can allegedly affect fertility-related hormones and lead to low birth weight and pre-term deliveries (https://tinyurl.com/yd9fxoe8).
The Cost in Human Lives
The first example of EPA’s deliberately ignoring scientific evidence was its ban on DDT in 1972. This ban has led to about 50 million deaths from malaria worldwide; about 500 million cases are reported annually. Governmental and UN bureaucracies and immensely wealthy foundations threaten to cut off aid to poor Africans if they use DDT. Yet not one peer-reviewed, independently replicated study has linked DDT exposure to any adverse outcome in humans (tinyurl.com/acc5md3).
Incalculable are the benefits that could accrue from productive use of the $1.5 trillion that former EPA insider Alan Carlin estimates the world wastes every year because of climate alarmism based on faulty evidence (https://tinyurl.com/y7ouybpy).
Micromanaging Food
In order to reduce the environmental impact of food, policymakers would need to deal with 570 million farms in widely diverse climate and soil conditions that use vastly different methods. A recent study consolidated data on greenhouse gas emissions, land use, terrestrial acidification, eutrophication, and scarcity-weighted fresh water withdrawals related to 40 major foods, from 38,700 farms and 1,600 processors. Monitoring multiple impacts and trade-offs from changing practices would require data from producers as well as from satellites. Planners want to “communicate impacts up the supply chain.” For example, returnable stainless steel kegs create just 20 g of CO2 eq per liter of beer, vs. 300-750 g for recycled glass bottles vs. 450-2,500 for bottles sent to landfills. Both producers and consumers need to be “incentivized” to reduce the impact of food production and distribution. “Moving from current diets to a diet that excludes animal products…has transformative potential” (Science 6/1/18).
War on Air Pollution
The UK’s ambition to reach the WHO standard for fine particulates (PM2.5, less than 2.5 µm diameter) of an average < 10 µg/m3 (the U.S. standard is 12 µg/m3) would require heavy regulation of a “huge, wide range of sectors and industries.” A key component is emissions of ammonia, which fuels atmospheric chemical reactions that produce problematic particulates. Farm use of fertilizers and manure from livestock and chickens produce 88% of the UK’s ammonia emissions. The government also proposes tackling domestic wood stoves and fireplaces and vehicle tires and brakes. The 104-page Clean Air Strategy also envisions phasing out diesel-fueled trains by 2040 (Science 6/1/18).
Exxon’s “Secret Science”
The cities of Oakland and San Francisco sued Exxon for damages that allegedly will result from climate change, accusing them of concealing evidence of harm from use of its products. The secret was that Exxon quoted, and by implication accepted, a summary of the Second IPCC Assessment Report (1995), which included Benjamin Santer’s mysterious distinct “human fingerprint,” the hot spot in the tropical troposphere at about 33,000 ft (TWTW 4/7/18). This was important for signing the Kyoto Protocol, and is one of the three lines of evidence the EPA relies on to regulate CO2 emissions. The hot spot, however, cannot be found, in analyzing five different datasets dating from 1959 to 2015, once the changing El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) patterns are removed (TWTW, sepp.org 9/24/16).
The late Frederick Seitz called the process involved in inserting the term “distinct human fingerprint” the worse abuse of the peer review process he had seen in 60 years of American science.
Save the Oceans from Plastic
The theme of 2018’s Earth Day was the contamination of the oceans with plastic. Fears of a previously unrecognized environmental catastrophe—the endangerment of fish by microplastic particles in the ocean—erupted after the 2016 publication of an article by Oona Lönnstedt and Peter Eklöv at Uppsala University in Science. The U.S. had already banned plastic microbeads in personal care products. After early dismissal of their concerns, whistleblowers persisted, and the data were found to be completely fabricated (Randall and Welser, op. cit.).
Nonetheless, the war on plastics continues. “Beat Plastic Pollution” was the theme of the UN’s June 5 World Environment Day. The Plastic Pollution Coalition, claiming membership of 500 groups, calls plastic “a substance the earth cannot digest.” It is “overwhelming our planet.” The war on plastics is part of the war on hydrocarbon fuels: “Plastic pollution and climate change are parallel global emergencies” (tinyurl.com/p5cffan).
Some want all plastics eliminated—though vital for health and civilization, as they are in heart valves, smart phones, and protective helmets, as well as food packaging. Some would allow those manufactured from biofuels. This would require turning nearly the whole planet into a biofuel farm.
Plastic is “litter, not pollution,” states Canadian ecologist and Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore. It is not toxic and passes right through the digestive tract if eaten (tinyurl.com/y8jjner5). The best way to dispose of it is by incineration, with proper emissions control. Most plastic in the ocean comes from rivers in Asia—and millions of tons of that comes from waste shipped from the EU for “recycling” (https://tinyurl.com/y8284py3).
Torturing the Data
Potential birth defects are a horror that is especially likely to arouse public concern. Vast data-dredging studies have been carried out to try to demonstrate a connection between PM2.5 exposure and congenital anomalies such as cleft palate or heart defects—most showing minor associations or no effect. A study by Ren et al. in the Journal of Pediatrics (2018;193:76-84) also looked at preconception exposure. The study included 548,863 live births in Ohio from 2006-2010. Exposure was estimated from monthly averages measured at 57 EPA PM2.5 monitors, using the one closest to the maternal residence, for five periods, the month of conception and 1 and 2 months prior or after. Mean PM2.5 level was compared for births with and without anomalies. The maximum mean difference in PM2.5 levels for the three “most susceptible” time periods was a minuscule 0.32 µg/m3. [The limits for detection and error of measurement are not given.] The maximum adjusted odds ratio (of the 3 of 18 that were outside the 95% confidence interval) was 1.2. The potential mechanism for a teratogenic effect of PM2.5 of unknown composition deep in the mother’s lungs on a not-yet-conceived embryo was admittedly “speculative” and included oxidative stress and placental inflammation. See criteria for “pathological science” on p 1.
Corrupted Evidence in Medicine
Publication Bias: Of completed drug trials, well under half are published. Most published ones favor the drug.
Rigged Outcomes: Before 2000, researchers did not have to register the primary outcome to be measured. Many were measured and the most favorable ones reported. Before 2000, 57% of trials found a positive result. After 2000, only 8% did.
Paid-off Journal Editors: About half of journal editors receive payment of some type from drug or device companies. The most egregious may be theJournal of the American College of Cardiology. In 2014, each editor received, on average, $475,072 personally and another $119,407 for “research.” With 35 editors, that’s about $15 million in bribes (https://tinyurl.com/ybculpks).