Massive fraud in the EPA/DOE Energy Star Program. Automated system allows fake products to get approval.
WASHINGTON — Does a “gasoline-powered alarm clock” qualify for the EnergyStar label, the government stamp of approval for an energy-saving product?
Like more than a dozen other bogus products submitted for approval since last June by Congressional auditors posing as companies, it easily secured the label, according to a Congressional report to be issued Friday. So did an “air purifier” that was essentially an electric space heater with a feather duster pasted on top, the Government Accountability Office said.
See photo below
In a nine-month study, four fictitious companies invented by the accountability office also sought EnergyStar status for some conventional devices like dehumidifiers and heat pump models that existed only on paper. The fake companies submitted data indicating that the models consumed 20 percent less energy than even the most efficient ones on the market. Yet those applications were mostly approved without a challenge or even questions, the report said.
Auditors concluded that the EnergyStar program was highly vulnerable to fraud.
Maria Vargas, an official with the Environmental Protection Agency, which runs the program with the Energy Department, said the approvals did not pose a problem for consumers because the products never existed. There was “no fraud,” Ms. Vargas emphasized. She said she doubted that many of the 40,000 genuine products with EnergyStar status had been mislabeled.
…
Yet auditors found problems beyond the approval of nonexistent products. They determined that once a company registered as an EnergyStar partner, it could download the logo from the government’s Web site and paste it on products for which it had not even requested approval.
The report is only the latest in a series involving the 18-year-old EnergyStar program, which was set up to guide the public on energy-efficient choices that could both save people money and help reduce the nation’s runaway energy consumption.
Watchdogs within the Environment Protection Agency and the Department of Energy have reported in the past that Energy Star has taken some claims of energy efficiency on faith. Yet the new study suggests that it often does so on remote control.
Congressional auditors said they were told by EnergyStar officials that some of the approvals, including the one for the gasoline alarm clock, had been issued by an automated system and that the details had probably never been reviewed by a human being.
Read the rest at the New York Times here.
A full report is available at the GAO:
Summary web page here.
Highlights PDF here
Detailed report PDF here
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What’s next…the energy efficient mouse trap…reduces energy use by 50%/
If anyone needed proof that “climate change” is an excuse for politicians and bureaucrats to indulge themselves going on junkets at taxpayers’ expense to talk about something they don’t actually believe really exists, the Daily Express provides it today:
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/165474
CLIMATE MEPS LIVE IT UP IN TENERIFE
Saturday March 27,2010
Nick Fagge
A GROUP of Euro-MPs sparked fury yesterday after jetting off to sunny Tenerife on an expensive junket to discuss climate change. The six-day summit will see scores of Eurocrats descending on the Canary Isles, leaving taxpayers back home to pick up the £550,000 bill.
Five British MEPs form part of the EU delegation that will discuss climate change, bananas and illegal immigration on the popular holiday island. But no treaties will be signed and no legislation will come into force as the summit has no power to enshrine decisions in law. Instead, the 250 delegates will enjoy visits to the island’s finest beaches and be wined and dined at gala dinners while living it up in luxury hotels.
Critics last night branded it “hypocritical” to fly delegations thousands of miles – creating some 200 tons in carbon emissions – to discuss saving the planet. UKIP Euro-MP Derek Clark said: “MEPs from all three establishment parties are off on a junket with taxpayers’ cash, pouring tons of carbon into the atmosphere.”
Mark Wallace, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It is sickening that these MEPs are jetting off to a sunny island while their constituents are stuck with strikes, pay cuts and tax rises. To fly to a conference where they plan to lecture us about climate change is the height of hypocrisy.
“It’s funny how these conferences are always held somewhere with sandy, sunny beaches.”
Friends of the Earth said: “MEPs should be leading by example.”
The summit, which starts today, was described as little more than a “talking shop” by one Eurocrat. Among the delegates are British Euro‑MPs David Martin (Labour), Martin Callanan (Conservative), Robert Sturdy (Conservative), James Nicholson (Ulster Unionist) and Fiona Hall (Liberal Democrat).
Last night Miss Hall said it was Spain which chose Tenerife as it holds the EU presidency. She added: “It is ridiculous that we have to go all the way to Tenerife.” No other MEP was available for comment. The delegation is made up of 68 Euro-MPs from all 27 EU member states. They will meet with 68 representatives from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) nations and up to 114 officials and translators.
Conference and accommodation costs are estimated to be £400,000, while flights for the EU delegation will cost £160,000. ACP delegates are expected to pay their own way. An ACP-EU spokesman told the Daily Express yesterday that Tenerife had been chosen because the Canary Islands were Europe’s biggest banana producer and a prime gateway for illegal immigration.
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What have bananas and illegal immigration got to do with climate change? I wait, agog, to find out.
It looks like we are stuck with Pachauri until 2013.
This is from today’s Independent, where he answers his critics:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/im-not-quitting-says-underfire-un-climate-boss-1928872.html
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‘I’m not quitting’ says under-fire UN climate boss
Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Saturday, 27 March 2010
The much-criticised head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr Rajenda Pachauri, gave a vigorous defence of his position last night, accepting there had been mistakes in the IPCC’s work, taking responsibility for some of them, but robustly refusing to stand down. He would see out his term and preside over the next IPCC assessment report, due in 2013, he said.
Dr Pachauri agreed that the actions of the IPCC in recent months, when some of its forecasts had been shown to be wrong and it had not responded quickly enough to criticism, had contributed to the public loss of belief in predictions of global warming and in human responsibility for climate change. But he said the organisation had learned from these events and was taking steps to become much more responsive in future.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Independent, the 69-year-old Indian scientist also gave an extraordinary detailed defence of his personal life, allegations about which have been used in attacks on him in the last three months.
He has been accused of leading a film-star life with Bollywood friends in Delhi, enriching himself through his IPCC connections and publishing a raunchy sex novel. “My salary is something that you would find laughable,” he said (later revealing it was $45,000 dollars per annum). “I have never bothered about money – I come from a family of academics. My lifestyle is barely comfortable, but there are some things I am very conscious of. When I leave my office, I switch off the lights even if I am out for five minutes. In Delhi, temperatures drop to 1 degree Celsius in the winter, but I refuse to use heating in my bedroom – I’ll take an extra blanket or whatever. I’ve been a vegetarian for several years now, I haven’t seen a movie for years together, and I work every day of my life.”
Dr Pachauri said a “forensic audit” of the money he made from advising organisations on climate change, carried out by the auditors KPMG, had shown that it all went into his Indian energy institute, TERI. “They’ve checked on that and clearly come up with conclusion that not a penny comes to me,” he said. “I could be earning a lot, I could be earning a million dollars a year if I wanted, but whatever little I get, which is nowhere near a million dollars, goes to my institute which is a charitable institution not owned by anybody. Any minor surpluses we generate, we use for doing work in rural areas, making sure the poorest of the poor get lighting by using solar lanterns.”
He agreed he had friends in Bollywood, but said that it was Bollywood stars who were used to promote his institute’s “Lighting a million lights”project. “Amitabh Bachchan, who is really the biggest Bollywood superstar we’ve ever had perhaps, he’s a brand ambassador for us, and if I can use these personalities for a good cause, I feel perfectly comfortable doing so,” he said.
As for his recently-published novel, Return to Almora, he said suggestions that it was a “sex novel” were “totally off the mark.”
“This is absolutely ridiculous, he said. “This is a novel of 400 pages about a person who is trying to look at the meaning of life, what happens to the human soul when we die, where does it go, and in the course of this he falls in love and he has a few relationships, but I’m not describing any explicit sex scenes. That’s a totally false impression. I’m happy to send you a copy if you have the patience to go through it, but it’s 400 pages all about spirituality.”
Dr Pachauri accepted the IPCC was at fault in some of the incorrect predictions in its last report, in particular the suggestion that the Himalayan glaciers would melt though global warming by 2035 (the real figure should be 2350).
He said he was informed of this in mid-January and acted immediately to correct it, but he accepted that the IPCC had not responded quickly enough to media inquiries, and said it would be setting up its own media unit at its Geneva headquarters (it is currently without a dedicated media operation or press office).
He revealed that just how much carbon the world can emit and keep global warming temperature rises to no more than two degrees Celsius will be worked out this year, for the next UN climate meeting to be held in Cancun, Mexico, next December.
It reminds one of the financial ratings agencies triple A for junk.
Top Gear did a show featuring a V8 food mixer. I reckon if they converted it to biofuel that would qualify, wouldn’t it?
Pachauri claims in the Guardian today that he is being hounded and persecuted by skeptics, and he is the subject of Mccarthyite-witch hunt-type attacks accusing him of being a climate criminal and …oh, do excuse my typos as I my screen is going blurry through my tears.. anyway you can have a good cry yourself reading about how the poor doctor is being dissed when he is just trying to save the planet, and him with no personal interests at stake, etc…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/26/rajendra-pachauri-climate-science-persecution
The head of the UN’s climate change panel has accused politicians and prominent climate sceptics of “a new form of persecution” against scientists who work on global warming.
In a strongly worded article published on the Guardian website, Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), hit out at those in “positions of power and responsibility” who try to portray “dedicated scientists as climate criminals”.
…blah, blah, blah.
I’m going to submit a bio-diesel powered chainsaw for cutting bread, and I guarantee it’ll use 20% less fuel than all other bread-cutting chainsaws on the market. When not being used for its intended purpose, it could be used for cutting this collection of smug bureaucrats down to size. Or cutting ring-samples from a certain bristlecone-pine somewhere in the Rockies….
How about a few new collective nouns for the current news climate? A “warming” of climate scientists, a “huddle” of bureaucrats, a “smugness” of MSM journalists, an “indignation” of sceptics, a “confusion” of politicians”, a “hockey-stick” of statistics, an “interpolation” of data, a “conflation” of evidence….
Any suggestions?
You don’t understand the Gasoline powered Alarm Clock. You get sleepy when the motor block starts its purring soothing vibrations and you wake up when it stops. Works best when you sleep on top of it.
This is like the EU’s CE programme for imports, which remarkably enough is behind the raft of dodgy chinese products banned in the US last year and the year before. In principle it’s a grand idea: the producer certifies that his products are up to the standards required and then they get fast-tracked through customs without the usual checks on whether they’re actually up to the standards they’re claimed to be up to. In fact anything bearing a CE mark and the necessary paperwork for import to the EU can’t be checked by customs officials at all.
The CE scheme was seen as so clever that many other countries relied on it as an unofficial certification, or set up their own schemes along similar lines.
And of course it is riven with fraud and deceit. Manufacturers routinely forge the paperwork through bribes or the use of loyal “inspectors”, producing shoddy, sub-standard and sometimes lethally dangerous goods that cannot be spotted when the goods are being imported, because they aren’t checked, and are usually only spotted when they kill or injure someone.
Numerous systems we rely on every day are broken at a fundamental level. They could be fixed quite easily, but that would mean bureaucrats in positions of some authority would lose their perceived power and prestige, and for them that’s terrible.
With over a $1.5 trillion annual budget deficit adding to the $12+ trillion national debt, a good start in trimming the budget would be to abolish the (redundant) EPA, and cut the size of the (energy inefficient) Energy Dept by 2/3rds.
A really good engine for the alarm clock would be the Foden FD6 two-stroke diesel from 1964:
If you survive the fumes, you won’t fall asleep.
OT, but this is funny:
UN climate change chief Rajendra Pachauri says sorry — and switches to neutral
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7078140.ece
He claimed he had the support of all the world’s governments and denied that, by remaining in post, he was undermining the IPCC’s chances of regaining credibility with the public.
“It is not correct to say there are people who don’t trust me,” he said.
QOTW?
Anthony: The WUWT 4-cycle alarm clock in the photo appears to be based on the S&S 113c.i. V-twin. That’s physically too tall to fit into my 1978 H-D FXS frame. Do they have Shovel Head versions of the alarm clocks? That would be a direct replacement!!
I couldn’t find the gasoline powered crapper.
Seems like everything government does turns to crap. Anyone else notice the effect?
I’m crying because I’m laughing so hard. People with integrity no longer exist.
Of course your clock is sponsored by EEEEEvil Big Oil.
About the CE certification system: Yes, any ole chinese firestarting USB hub can be sold in Europe. OTOH, we start forcing people to have smoke detectors installed to compensate for the extra suffocations and burn victims. Marvellous, ain’t it? And i did buy a USB hub that instantly went up in smoke and flames, the Chinese really show their millenia-old firecracker-building knowledge… luckily i was in the room.
This would be funny except for the fact that these people are real and they are only the tip of the iceberg.
Massive fraud in the EPA and DOE is *news*?
What would be *news* is a press release saying they had repented for all the actual damage they’ve done to the environment under the guise of protecting it.
And what would be *good* news is that they were so remorseful, they were resigning en masse and had already rigged their offices for demolition.
In the interest of full disclosure, I once had to take an EPA “scientist” to the hospital when he couldn’t see the flames from a lit landfill methane burner and stuck his arm down the tube to “prove” it wasn’t lit.
Doug in Seattle (21:59:17) : You’ve got it the wrong way round. The Engine is silent until the “Energy Star” clockwork powered alarm goes off. This starts the un-silenced Harley motor which wakes you up! Some inconsiderate has a road going version round here, and it certainly disturbs my sleep – even through double glazed windows….
Here’s a V8 Powered chainsaw – sounds like it could be running on alcohol…
mark fuggle (02:03:06) :
‘It reminds one of the financial ratings agencies triple A for junk.’
Thanks for the chuckle of the day!
We are now officially living in the age of Government induced fraud and deception at the expense of the taxpayer and the consumer.
– Government induced demonizing of coal, oil and gas
– Government induced promotion of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
– Government induced promotion of useless and expensive alternate energy generation technologies and so called carbon neutral resources
that are damaging to the environment and promote famines in the Third World because they compete with our food chain and raise the electricity bill of the consumer with no gain: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/electric_green_waste.html
– Government induced fraud schemes like the EPA/DOE Energy Star Program that do more harm than good, all based on a propaganda driven hoax!
These schemes undermine the very basis of the US power generation and prevent necessary investments where they are really needed.
The availability of cheap and reliable energy is essential for the US Economy.
This is all jeopardized in a very serious way.
Prepare for similar schemes to emerge in the Health care sector.
Action must be undertaken and the perpetrators must be punished.
I once saw a picture of an official outfitted government horse. It had so many protection devices that they probably out weighed the horse. Examples were a poop er catcher and the best of all–an automatic WHOA!
What a government-alas,so sad.
“Maria Vargas, an official with the Environmental Protection Agency, which runs the program with the Energy Department, said the approvals did not pose a problem for consumers because the products never existed. There was “no fraud,” Ms. Vargas emphasized.” What a stunning non sequitur. Is she for real? It is difficult to fathom how a human being could be that dense and still be able to function. Perhaps she’s some sort of droid they’re working on, but still haven’t worked out all the kinks.
“She said she doubted that many of the 40,000 genuine products with EnergyStar status had been mislabeled.”
Wow. So, because she “doubts” we’re all supposed to just believe? She needs to go back to the droid factory. The software needs some serious upgrading.
Does the Alarm Clock come with the Hemi option?
(Ask the dog what he thinks about Chevy now).