Face palm: EPA bureaucrat tap dances during testimony

This is an EPA story which has a happy (sort of) ending and is to do with the use of chlorine for the disinfection of water supplies and which also produces minute by-product traces of chloroform and chloroform like derivatives. This led to the zeroing out by the EPA of chloroform residuals in drinking water.
Agency scientists had carried out an exhaustive review of toxicological data on chloroform going back 20 years. Based on that review, the scientists recommended EPA adopt a standard of 300 parts per billion for water supplies. The scientists’ conclusion, which recognised a threshold level below which human exposure to chloroform poses only a minuscule risk, was hailed by scientists outside the agency, even drawing praise from the Society of Toxicology, the largest professional association of toxicologists in the world.
That praise, however, quickly disappeared when, in December 1998, EPA announced it was proposing a zero standard. In year 2000, the drama continued, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on March 31st seriously castigated the US EPA for its action. The case was (at the time) one of the most closely watched in the recent history of regulation. To acknowledge that there is little or no risk below a certain threshold undermines one of the key tenets of modern environmentalism which denies the existence of such thresholds.
In the end, EPA had cast its lot with the environmentalists and ignored the findings of its own scientists.
Happily the court of appeal’s ruling rejected the EPA’s position and reintroduced science into the environmental regulatory process.
But like the multi-headed hydra…..plus ca change

What qualifies Stanislaus and Jackson to be in their jobs? Are they economists or scientists at all? Why is the world being led by people who are not the physical and intellectual elite, who have not earned their stripes by blood, sweat and tears, who don’t have a single rational braincell between them?

Ryan Maue “The liberal media’s lack of coverage of this “inconsistency” in word versus deed with the Obama EPA demonstrates how in-the-tank the media is for the ’12 re-election. Ideology is more important than jobs.”
The EPA were up to this game long before Obama came onto the scene. The MSM have been “in-the-tank” on climate fraud long before Obama came onto the scene
The report of EPA being very effectively put on the spot before the committee is excellent but you can go post your partisan political rants elsewhere.
We’re still in early 2011 , WUWT is not a platform for your personal cheerleading for 2012. Take it somewhere else.

It’s shame that Rep. Cory Gardner, after being so insistant and making the EPA admin look so stupid, actually gave up and failed to get a yes or no answer on the record.

The biggest part of economic analysis is the effect on jobs. Stanislaus should resign for not knowing this basic but very important tenet of economic analysis.
Somehow one feels he will walk away from this meeting complaining about being misunderstood rather than realising he is completely clueless.

Jobs must be within the scope of any economic analysis. It is the jobs that form the basis of any economy and, through taxation, government gets enough money to ‘work’.

“Nick says: The EPA is toast!”
______________________________
Nope.
In fact, the EPA’s just solidified it’s status as being completely unanswerable to Congress or the will of the people.
When you see Lisa Jackson subpoenaed for ‘contempt of Congress’ for saying, in effect, that she’s ‘too busy to bother with mere Congress’, then your point will have some merit…

Poor Stanislaus failing miserably under cross-examination. My bet is he was only following orders. Green initiatives have been sold based on saving the planet and creating green jobs. The cost/benefit of both should be part of any economic analysis but then the evidence shows the costs far outweigh the benefits, and green jobs come at a cost of other jobs. If this were untrue, there would be much less scepticism given there would be an easily demonstrable economic benefit. The greenwash would be a much simpler sales job. Instead we get scenes like this where the Economy Pillaging Agency gets embarrassed.
As for what we should do with these career bureaucrats, I disagree with Joe about jailing them as that would still be a cost to the taxpayer. However, the WWF does now own a large part of the Amazon, so we could ship these people there with some basic supplies and let them demonstrate how to build their ideal low energy/low carbon utopia. If it works, principles they demonstrate could be adopted elsewhere. If it doesn’t, well, no great loss.

Congressional hearings are nothing more than point-scoring festivals, giving both sides new talking points to raise money. Congress is supposed to legislate, not investigate; every minute they spend on hearings is a minute they’re not working on their proper job. They should abolish EPA and all of its enabling laws, jail all present officials for life, and then apply its budget to a force of armed auditors, whose job is to stop any official in any department from attempting to restore the regulations under a new guise. Arrest at gunpoint, shoot to kill. EPA has been making war on us since 1988. Time to eradicate the enemy.

The Spanish didn’t consider job losses or price increases when formulating their “Green Energy” program, either. Now Spain is on the verge of bankruptcy. From http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf (52 pg. .pdf)

…we find that for every renewable energy job that the State manages to finance, Spain’s experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created.
Therefore, while it is not possible to directly translate Spain’s experience with exactitude to claim that the U.S. would lose at least 6.6 million to 11 million jobs, as a direct consequence were it to actually create 3 to 5 million “green jobs” as promised (in addition to the jobs lost due to the opportunity cost of private capital employed in renewable energy), the study clearly reveals the tendency that the U.S. should expect such an outcome.

I grew up with the environmental movement. We needed to protect our resources – land, air, and water. We needed science to study problems. We needed to evaluate the impact – environmental, economic, social, cultural impacts – of our decision making. What wound up happening to me is that I spent my life fighting bureaucrats (30+ years), who were more interested in growing fiefdoms and budgets, than considering reality. And, gradually came to care more about their pensions, healthcare and retirements and then people. Now, we have academic institutions who have trained young minds on the destruction of a free society. We are seeing not just the hubris of this current bunch. We all know what will come next and it won’t be pretty. Now, for a second, think about how stupid this government looks and then consider how many people are fighting them. Equal and opposite forces are at work. That’s our economy, producing nothing of value but idle chatter.

It is an interesting parallel that the US Administration with the agencies is actually running the country with no democratic accountability, in the same way as the European Commission and the European agencies run the EU. Congress and the Senate are steadily being reduced to the talking shop status of the European Parliament.