Putting The Wacko In 'Environmentalist Wacko'

They're at it again. The so-called scientists who are pushing these policies as fact have repeatedly been caught lying and doctoring their data.

Their liberal political allies in the media conveniently ignore these deceptions and run with the faulty conclusions for no other reason than that they really feel it should be true:

In “Assessment of Obama Administration’s Cost-Benefit Analysis of Clean Air Act Regulation,” economist David Montgomery reveals the very large net regulatory benefits touted by EPA rely on apples to orange comparisons, where the vast majority of the benefits have none of the financial reality that the costs do.

“In its Clean Air Act appraisal, EPA substitutes calculated misdirection for solid analysis” explained NTU Executive Vice President Pete Sepp. “Nearly all of EPA’s promised $2 trillion in benefits from existing regulations stem from feelings rather than fiscal improvements.

“Federal regulators arrived at their staggering figures by polling individuals on how much they’d be willing to pay to reduce risks in general, mostly using estimates from studies of occupational risks unrelated to air pollution.”

Of course, even they will admit one thing that people on our side of the argument can agree with:

Dr. Montgomery added “while less than 3 percent of the EPA’s purported benefits will show up as additional jobs or real output in the economy, 100 percent of the costs will do so. Even EPA’s own macroeconomic analysis shows that existing air pollution regulations are a net drag on the economy. And EPA’s tally doesn’t even take into account the costs of its pending new ozone standards and regulations on electric utilities over the next decade.”

So, basically, you have the following progression:
1. there's no real problem
2. self-righteous liberals feel very strongly that there should be a problem
3. the solutions proposed by said liberals will solve nothing (because there's nothing to solve) while killing jobs and severely impairing the economic well-being of America

What's not to love?

In fact, do you recall Obama's promise from the 2008 pre-election campaign days of skyrocketing energy prices if his policies are put into place? Get ready, because Obama's policies are being implemented, bit by bit, starting with the EPA. So...here come the skyrocketing prices! And it's happening by design, not by accident.

To confirm that, look no further than one of the few states that's in good economic shape -- Texas -- and how Obama's EPA is waging war on it by wrestling control of the state's air permits (emission permits), slapping new regulations on coal plants that reduce the amount of electricity they can generate, and using faulty logic to limit natural gas processing. Ironically...

This would be one thing if Texas were an outlier among the 50 states in terms of dirty air or an otherwise demonstrably imperiled environment. But the truth is closer to the opposite: the air in Texas has been getting cleaner; in the urban areas, much cleaner. And in spite of being by far the largest electric power producer of the 50 states, and heavily reliant on coal, Texas has been steadily reducing its emissions of the EPA’s least-favored compounds from coal combustion (e.g., sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide). Its emissions of NOx and SO2 are substantially lower than the national average; Texas is ranked the 11th lowest in NOx emissions (.098 lb/mmBtu in 2009, versus a national average of .159 lb/mmBtu), and 24th in SO2 (.309 lb/mmBtu in 2009, versus a national average of .458 lb/mmBtu).

But the EPA isn’t really making the argument that Texas is an environmental pigsty. It’s not putting any data or findings behind that premise, at any rate. Instead, it is simply acting high-handedly, assuming an authority that nothing in written law confers on it, to pronounce Texas’s procedures in violation of EPA rules – even when there is no basis for making that claim. To put it bluntly, the EPA is making a power grab.

But even beyond that, these people are nuts, and simply understanding what they genuinely believe should be enough to convince most people not to give them the time of day. Take the High Priest of Green, Al Gore:

The global warming debate has always been a touchy one for both sides, and when the world’s top global warming activist is talking about the size of population and how that contributes to the choices societies make, it might be worth taking note.

In an appearance Monday in New York City, former Vice President Al Gore, prominently known for his climate change activism, took on the subject of population size and the role of society in controlling it to reduce pollution.

Translation: abortion, abortion, abortion. But is he talking about even more drastic measures?

“You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children have, the spacing of the children.

You decide. But you should also note this quote from an article written by Gore earlier this week:

Admittedly, the contest over global warming is a challenge for the referee because it's a tag-team match, a real free-for-all. In one corner of the ring are Science and Reason. In the other corner: Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing Ideologues.

In other words, people are poisonous to the environment, and right-wing ideologues are protecting the poisoning.

Thus: wacko.