I wouldn’t have believed it if it were in any other newspaper but the very liberal San Francisco Chronicle – h/t to WUWT reader “crosspatch” who writes:
Was AB32 based on any data provided by the Air Resources Board?
According to various articles:
http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/new-carb-economic-analysis-ab32-0362.html
CARB had a lot of input in this legislation. They have a history if politics interfering with science and I have no confidence that this law is based on sound findings.
Here’s the story from the Chron:
(10-07) 16:36 PDT Sacramento – —
California grossly miscalculated pollution levels in a scientific analysis used to toughen the state’s clean air standards, and scientists have spent the past several months revising data and planning a significant weakening of the landmark regulation, The Chronicle has found.
The pollution estimate in question was too high – by 340 percent, according to the California Air Resources Board, the state agency charged with researching and adopting air quality standards. The estimate was a key part in the creation of a regulation adopted by the Air Resources Board in 2007, a rule that forces businesses to cut diesel emissions by replacing or making costly upgrades to heavy-duty, diesel-fueled off-road vehicles used in construction and other industries.
The staff of the powerful and widely respected Air Resources Board said the overestimate is largely due to the board calculating emissions before the economy slumped, which halted the use of many of the 150,000 diesel-exhaust spewing vehicles in California. Independent researchers, however, found huge overestimates in the Air Board’s work on diesel emissions and attributed the flawed work to a faulty method of calculation – not the economic downturn.
The overestimate, which comes after another bad calculation by the Air Board on diesel-related deaths that made headlines in 2009, prompted the board to suspend the regulation earlier this year while officials decided whether to weaken the rule.
Today, after months of work, the Air Board and construction industry officials announced they agreed on a major scale-back of the rule – a proposal that includes delaying the start of the requirements until 2014 and exempting more vehicles from the rule. The announcement was made as The Chronicle was preparing to publish this report, which had been in the works for several weeks.
The setbacks in the Air Board’s research – and the proposed softening of a landmark regulation – raise questions about the performance of the agency as it is in the midst of implementing the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 – or AB32 as it is commonly called, one of the state’s and nation’s most ambitious environmental policies to date.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/07/BAOF1FDMRV.DTL#ixzz11iqEfuN9
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
D’you think we might get more accuracy if we [snip ah, ah, none of that – Anthony]
Why am I not surprised. I guess the only surprise is that they actually admit it, before they get called out on it.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the entire “man-made” global warming scam seems to be falling faster than I could have imagined.
Ian
The real problem is that CARB is part of a larger philosophy to extract the elected government from the business of governing and handing more of that to unelected bureaucrats. CARB approves its own regulations and does not require the governor or the legislature to sign off on them.
CARB does not stand before the voters. They are beholden to nobody but themselves. No other state that I am aware of has an “Air Resources Board” and they get along just fine. They are a waste of the taxpayer’s money and they are what amounts to regulatory bullies. If you wish to appeal a regulation’s impact on you, you take your appeal back to them. We must eliminate this agency.
I see on the internet that California has a Professional Engineers Act. Could not some of these people who are making recommendations on emissions etc be charged under the PE act for a) not being registered and b) being incompetent? It is time that legal action was taken against those who are aiming to destroy the well being of all people.
I’m sure that the backpedaling has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that people will be voting in a month.
Breaking news: the California Air Resources Board based its air pollution regulations on flawed science.
In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning.
What is it an regulators and faulty data. It’s the “Harry Read Me ” thing all over again.
“This is crap,my maiden Aunt! I hope we don’t get audited!” Harry, the hapless
programmer of the Hadley/CRU mess…
This is an agency that has HUNDREDS of people making around $100k or more a year. They have nearly a thousand employees. WHY do we need 1000 people working for this agency for a single state?
Look at how many of these employees saw their salaries increase substantially between 2007 and 2009:
http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/?name=&agency=AIR+RESOURCES+BOARD&salarylevel=100000
Were private sector employees seeing their salaries increase like this between 2007 and 2009? Why the great variance in salaries from year to year? Are they getting “overtime”? For what purpose would a regulatory agency ever need to pay overtime? They are not a vital service. It isn’t like they are a fire department.
Again, this agency needs to go.
was too high – by 340 percent
Here they are showing care for accuracy after the fact.
Many claims of the IPCC have been exposed as inaccurate after the fact. Al Gore’s movie was found to be innaccurate after the fact.
Now let’s examine the climate models in public to reveal their inaccuracies to the public after the fact. Better late than never.
Its too late. Once you are able to scare on page one it does not matter what is said at a later time on page 30. Some see these things as mistakes— I see them as strategy.
I don’t know if CARB ever served a useful purpose but its very nature as an unelected and unaccountable regulatory body makes it very dangerous in my view. The idea here is that its supposed to regulate according to what the “science says”. But as always, the science is only as good as those who carry it out so the problem of accountability still remains. You can see their snide attitude oozing through with statements like:
“In politics people can fudge; in science you can’t. The great benefit of science is it is peer reviewed.”
Peer review has a nice ring to it, but as we can plainly see, its not enough and is merely a way to get around any form of transparent oversight when it comes to the POLITICS of regulating the planet.
After owning a diesel for several years, I will not drive anything else for a work vehicle and they are not pollutive when properly maintained. Thankfully in my part of BC, there is no smog check of any sort……..for now at least.
Only 340%?
I am surprised that the SF Chronicle ran the story. I haven’t seen or heard of this story anywhere else.
The so-called landmark California legislation is notable for its egregious errors and conclusions. Here is an excellent chance for the Governator to cut some of the unnecessary expenses in the state budget.
I am always amazed how the public in any country allows laws to be bought into operation under a democratic process, but enable the teeth of legislative control and coercion be later bought into operation by executive regulations designed to circumvent the very democratic process of review.
It is control by stealth and I agree with crosspatch those laws need to be repealed as the next step is to bring in punitive penalties that automatically rise each year, and reversal of the onus of proof where the burden falls on the individual to prove they are innocent of the by regulation introduced “devil in the detail” nature of the legislation.
Totality of control, inability to fight the state, total submission. Thank goodness that the internet allows sceptics the open communications to both examine, question, and probe. If it wasn’t for that precious freedom, we would have long been, bundled down the path of irretrievable return on this Global warming scam, where similarly distorted and hyped “science” (facts??) are used for social control and promotion of hidden agenda.
Only one measure possible.
Cut off their funding and shut them down or claim the hell out of them for economic losses. But don’t let them get away with this blunder.
Maybe, just maybe they’ve discovered reality. With the economy still in a recession & with so many people (i.e. breadwinners) out of work they decided to, shall we say, take a pause. Then maybe this has something to do with the Obama November elections stimulus.
This act, if I recall an article correctly written in the WSJ, would have required freight trucks to be upgraded with new pollution controls or be scrapped. Many truck drivers got into the business by buying 20 yr old trucks, and riding them until they could get financing to buy newer models. And this law would have put many of those truck drivers out of business. Now, everyone is in favor of newer and less polluting trucks (some inject urea into the exhaust system to reduce NOx emissions), but if not done right, the implementation can cause more economic harm than good. This law was way over the top based on my judgement. I’m glad that it is being re-considered for economic impact (i.e., less aggressive implementation).
crosspatch says:
October 7, 2010 at 5:48 pm
The real problem is that CARB is part of a larger philosophy to extract the elected government from the business of governing and handing more of that to unelected bureaucrats. CARB approves its own regulations and does not require the governor or the legislature to sign off on them.
CARB does not stand before the voters. They are beholden to nobody but themselves. No other state that I am aware of has an “Air Resources Board” and they get along just fine. They are a waste of the taxpayer’s money and they are what amounts to regulatory bullies. If you wish to appeal a regulation’s impact on you, you take your appeal back to them. We must eliminate this agency.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I guess when you model the state agency after the federal agency which has the same unfettered powers to regulate without legislation and no ability to counter it you are doomed to dictatorship…
I say that California and the US government have agencies which should be abolished or severely limited in scope.
Aw, nobody REALLY sounds irritated 😉
Let’s try this:
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/24454/California_Ignores_Scientific_Protests_Passes_New_Diesel_Regulations.html
…or maybe this:
http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/blog/andy-caldwell/7704-scandal-surrounding-california-air-resources-board
So, all you diesel lovers get to put in a Diesel Exhaust Fluid or AUS32 (Aqueous Urea Solution 32.5%) or your car/truck will run like it is going to die.
Amazing that they got the “piss” concentration to be the assembly bill number…
Typo:
“They have a history if [sic] politics interfering with science…”
“One of the major recent problems was an Air Board estimate of premature deaths caused by particulate matter spewing from diesel engines. The first calculation found 18,000 deaths a year in the state had links to particulate matter. That has been revised down by nearly half.
The revision was ordered after the board scientist who oversaw that study was outed as having faked his scientific credentials.”
………………………………………………………..
From the article. the last line is the one that caught my eye.. a continuation of climategate anyone? are we short qualified scientists or just short ones who will fake data for a desired outcome?
DCC, that is my typo in the original comment on another thread. The comment was copied as I typ(o)ed it.
Different place same old story-
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/energy-efficiency-weather-data-30-years-old/story-fn59niix-1225935703380
*****
crosspatch says:
October 7, 2010 at 5:48 pm
The real problem is that CARB is part of a larger philosophy to extract the elected government from the business of governing and handing more of that to unelected bureaucrats. CARB approves its own regulations and does not require the governor or the legislature to sign off on them.
*****
This is exactly how socialism functions. Look at the health care bill. It is so complex. It requires government to make decisions on an individual basis on what health care is doled out. There is no way the elected representatives can do this, so it gets handed off to an ever larger bureaucracy. The people in it are not elected representatives, yet they make life and death decisions for us. The EPA is another example. This is why only a small government can function under the rule of law and allow individual freedom, where all laws apply equally to everyone and people aren’t under the thumb of government. I highly recommend “The Road to Serfdom.” It is a great book written in the forties. It applies to our government now.
Oh my, Thank God they didn’t make a bad calculation that was 340% too low.
Half the state would be dead?
Are their ever any honest mistakes which underestimate anything enviro-loons want higher?