Michael Bastasch
10:35 AM 08/16/2017
Many Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) programs are redundant and could be eliminated without hurting environmental quality, according to a new report on reforming the federal bureaucracy.
“The EPA needs to be made more transparent and efficient, a goal that can be achieved while continuing to protect the nation’s environment,” reads the report published by the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) on Wednesday.
CEI gave a series of recommendations on how to make EPA more transparent and accountable, including eliminating regional offices and changing science programs.
“Many of the EPA’s regional offices and grant programs are redundant and should be abolished,” reads the short report written by Myron Ebell, who headed President Donald Trump’s EPA transition team.
“Other reform priorities include improving data quality standards for new research and transferring emergency response duties to the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Ebell wrote.
The group says EPA’s budget “is the most impenetrable of all federal department and agency budgets,” which makes it hard for Congress to know how taxpayer dollars are being spent. CEI wants EPA to do what other agencies do and put forward a budget that “clearly identifies the spender, how much they spend, and the legal basis for the spending.”
No doubt, CEI’s suggestions will be opposed by environmental groups. Activists opposed President Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to EPA’s budget and elimination of dozens of agency programs.
“There is no way to sugarcoat this, President Trump has taken a wrecking ball to environmental protection in the US,” Ken Kimmell, president of the Union for Concerned Scientists, told CNN in May. “Frankly I didn’t think this would happen with the severity with this is happening. We have had changes in powers before. Different presidents strike a different balance. But this is a severe attack that we didn’t expect.”
Environmentalists have filed dozens of lawsuits to stop Trump’s policy agenda from going through. Environmental activists even filed suit against the U.S.-Mexico border wall being planned by the Department of Homeland Security, arguing it would hurt endangered species.
Targeting EPA science programs has been on the Republican to-do list for years. Conservative groups and lawmakers worry EPA uses science to back pre-determined policy conclusions.
Republicans have also voiced concerns about the impartiality of outside EPA science advisers, most of whom take agency money to conduct research, creating a potential conflict of interest.
The House passed legislation in March to reform how EPA uses scientific research, but the bill hasn’t gotten much attention in the Senate.
EPA is affected by the same sort of redundancy issue that affects many environmental causes. Ironically, they are often not sustainable.
Problem or issue is identified, problem or issue is fixed and legislation is passed, no further reason for those advocating the problem or issue to remain.
Say you want to campaign for a remote national park. Ok, National Park gets declared. Most don’t need any sort of ongoing management. You are now out of reason for campaigning, so you have to go onto something else.
To thingadonta…We have the exact same issues in Australia. You probably heard all about how the Great Barrier Reef is all but destroyed due to human activity inc. shock global warming horror? Well that was a load of bullshit. Just another El Niño occurrences like the thousands of previous El Niño’s before, some small damage to the Nth of the reef where water levels are temporarily low…(yes, low)… due to prevailing winds and ocean currents during the event meaning the reef is less protected from UVs…and then as soon as it is over everything goes back to normal. See all of history!
However, this has given the liars and fraudsters in Gov. bureaucracies all sorts of “issues” to examine at great cost to the long suffering taxpayer.
Same shit, different asshole, irritable Bill.
It is the difference between industry and government. In industry, a job is a cost. In government, a job is a JOB! No need to justify the cost.
Oh wow, that must mean they have manage to “penetrate” the impenetrable budget of the DoD and the Pentagon.
Hopefully they will make this ground-breaking work public.
Greg,
If you read the defense authorization act you will see where every penny of the DoD budget is spent – minus about 5% of the budget that is on black programs.
You won’t account for 10% of the EPA expenditures looking at the appropriations bills.
It’s got nothing to do with being an environmental issue. The same is true for all bureaucracies (not just government). texasjimbrock is correct in his assessment.
Well I believe there are at least a dozen agencies of the Federal Government that look at the stars with telescopes to figure out what the time is, and they spend millions of dollars (each) per year doing it.
And when they are all done doing that, the Congress simply says, why don’t you all move your clocks up and hour or maybe back an hour, or whatever you please.
The Congress determines the proper time by contemplating their navels or something akin to that method.
G
Let me tell you one anecdote of how the “Waters of the United States” affected the oil exploration company I worked for.
(This actually happened in two separate areas) Oil prospect(s) near river in NE Texas. The WotUS allows the Corps of Engineers to monitor wetlands on private property to the extent that if an existing dirt road on private property (aka “hunter’s road”) needed to be expanded so much as six inches, an environmentalist needs to be hired to determine and map out the actual extent of the wetlands. Six inch widening over 1/8 mile? Sure. The hired environmentalist will fill out the paperwork and deal with the Corps of Engineers for you. You’ll have to pay to compensate taking 1/64 of an acre of land away from the wetlands, but that’s just the cost of doing business. Right? (The fees usually go to help already established wetlands that do things like clean water for the large water districts, to service far away water users, such as in Dallas)
But wait! Your request to may be to widen (or extend) a long existing hunter’s road on private property, it’s in Caddo territory! (indigenous people of NE Texas) Now in addition to hiring the environmentalist, you now get to hire an archaeologist. He’ll come with great credentials and a shovel. He will make random digs along your path, and if he/she finds pottery shards, whoa Nelly! A full dig is then requested by the Corps of Engineers, because they want a full report on traces of Native American settlements. On private land. At the expense of the oil company. Because they can.
What does the government do with these reports? What happens when they find shards of a sharpened stone tools (which happened in the case of my company) And the archaeologist does his extra digs? After all, you’re going to use this seasonal wetland for a road. After finding the traces of Native Americans, what do they do? Not a damn thing. You promise to cover the road with lots of gravel so the pottery shards are not disturbed, and you make your road.
What about the well site that starts maybe five feet off the road you’re building? You situate so the well site isn’t on wetlands and the government has no right to inspect that part of the private property for traces. You could be digging a mud pit and turn up all sorts of stuff and nobody would know. Nobody has a right to look.
The demarcation of the wetlands mean everything to jurisdiction.
How does the environmentalist know where to mark on his/her map? They dig the soil and match the soil color to an established color in a chart book. Vegetation, too, of course. But in the case of both of my areas, dams changed everything 50 years ago. Flooding is controlled, so the bald cypress trees won’t come back because the area is dryer now.
BTW, the Corps of Engineers and the archaeologists know good and well the villages for the Caddo were on high ground, and almost never in the area now considered wetlands. They’re looking for hunting spots and temporary settlements. It’s a huge waste. Thanks, EPA!
Cadeau in French means a gift or present. Maybe the spelling got corrupted over time , sounds like cadeau country.
Caddo is short for “Kadohadacho” in their own language. It’s not French.
Well the French can’t even pronounce ” Dulin ” properly, which is an ordinary Irish name.
They say something akin to …. Doo- lahn …. and if you asked for Mrs. Dulin, they wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what you are saying.
G
in my area of Aus Victoria
ANY soil raised more than 10cm requires permits by council with inspection and fees
unless;-)
you call it a firebreak or raised garden bed
i now have lots of both
conveniently bermshaped to slow water down -accidental like;-) 😉
meanwhile local council raised a low spot on a side rd
their drainage from the high side to MY side now floods over half my 7 acres every winter
right now i have ducks swimming happily
next yr i plant rice!!
luckily we DO have a min size dam you can create before permissions required with fees
I am saving to do that.
they wanna inundate my land n refuse to admit it
i will use it!
In my area the EPA gave the farmers grants to turn their flat land that had retained the rainfall (by my definition a wetland) and build grass lined ditches so that the surface soil did not erode. Now the rain that sat on their land for weeks comes down the itty bitty little creek in hours and floods the storm sewer for the entire town. My factory is closed down because the road is impassable and our parking lot becomes the retention pond for the city. And the farmers get ongoing payments to not plant corn in the grass lined ditches. So now the entire town has been flooded and is appealing for an emergency grant from FEMA. So many things wrong with this picture.
Walt Stone, you’re exactly right about that. I work for the Corps of Engineers as a professional geologist and that’s exactly how it’s done. Another thing about the EPA is that in the opinion of many ‘in the know’ is that they have no real expertise in anything anymore and they’re basically the enforcement arm of the UN’s environmental ideas in Agenda 21. To quote one colleague “The EPA has been circling the drain for year.”
Walt Stone, I feel your pain. Had to move an entire 5 acre compressor site 10′ up a hill (i.e., excavate an extra 10,000 FT3 and haul it off (10 yards at a time) to avoid disturbing a wetland. The wetland? A tire rut in a hunting road (you could even see the tread marks) that decided to retain water and grow a pussy willow.
So the building of the USA- Mexican wall ?, even that will affect some endangered species. What next from the wonderland of envioremental science.
The EPA so called scientists should be told to write a detailed report as to why the gas CO2 is a good gas, essential for all life on Earth, and that it simply re-radiates whatever energy strikes it, including at night the heat still present in the atmosphere, thus cooling the world. That its natures fertiliser abd its presetly helping to Green the Earth. . It is not into the storage of hat , so the name “Greenhouse effect is “incorrect.
Those who refuse to write such a report should be told to seek other employment.
The endangered species is the illegal immigrant.
Civil servants have a tendency to indulge in empire-building and puffing up the importance of their own function / department. What seems exceptional with the EPA is the extent to which it has been used to foster and advance personal enviro-political aims.
Weeding out the eco-activists to get back to scientifically valid approaches (as opposed to melding the science to justify the desired policy) is going to be a tough task.
I’m gong to guess that a 60% reduction in staffing levels will produce better and more valid outputs with nil environmental detriment.
IMO the federal EPA is beyond redemption. Shut it down. Fund state agencies to do the job , they know the terrain and are better equipped to tackle pollution.
If they stopped hyperventilating about CO2 they may get the real job done and prevent disasters like King gold mine and Flint water poisoning.
How ironic. The runaway regulatory effect has been observed, reproduced, and is well understood.
Windmill and photovoltaic farms cause mass disruption to local ecology (i.e. blight factor). Perhaps we should reassess the unearned environmentally friendly nod to utility grade “green” solutions.
nn: Windmills on the West coast slaughter hundreds of birds on the endangered species list. But, hey! that’s okay. Because global warming.
Rubbish. The mills turn so slow that any bird can easily slip through.
@HenryP
“…
According to the current literature somewhere between 140,000 and 328,000 birds die each year from collisions with wind turbines. …”
source:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-wind-turbines-really-kill-180948154/
Apparently the mills aren’t slow enough.
@HenryP
Apparently the birds are slower than the windmills.
What is the tip speed of those purportedly slow moving windmills? IIRC, a major design constraint is avoiding having the tips go transonic.
@HenryP
You speak “Rubbish”.
the design blade tip speed of the Vestas V112 3MW machine is 232 mph & the area swept
by blades = 9,852 m2 (2.43 acres).
Please do some research BEFORE making comment…you could start with –
http://www.aweo.org/windmodels.html
A few sites with 1980s multiple lattice towers designs, sited without regard to bird wintering or migration paths did cause bird casualties in the past. Notably the notorious Altamont Pass(which also had power lines which electrocuted eagles).
But! designs and sites post 1980s did not have the towers which attracted roosting birds and were not sited in areas which were extensively used…
wind turbines for the last 30 years are not a significant hazard to birds.
yet the figures quoted for bird deaths are still nearly all extrapolated from Altamont Pass.
If you look at the population figures for US eagles you will see that if eagle deaths nationally are as claimed, the eagle is already extinct. Twice.
Henry is clearly confusing rotation , which is very slow, with blade speed.
The may look “slow” from a couple of miles away but if you want to play “chicken” dodging the blades they are still coming at you at several hundred miles per hour and are not that visible against a bright sky.
A “bird’s eye view” of the blade is also edge on. Not much change of seeing that coming. Like trying to spot a scud with your bear eyes, coming at you end-on out of the sky.
HenryP and Griff You are both wrong. Watch one for yourselves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NAAzBArYdw Same with bats. Too many people don’t care about these valuable insectivores because they’re not pretty or “cute”. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bat-killings-by-wind-energy-turbines-continue/
So claimith: Henryp – August 17, 2017 at 9:17 pm
Wind turbine facts, to wit:
Someone please do the math …… and tell Henryp …….. just how fast (fps – feet/second) the “tip ends” of those 148-ft rotor blades are actually revolving ……. when the rotor shaft is turning at 20 rpm.
Predatory birds focus their attention ahead, not to the sides while flying.
Tom Halla
You raise a great point: tip speed. Years ago when he was young, I was given instruction by Dr Peter South (NRC Canada) on how to choose a blade section, for example NC1001 which was used on the MW sized Darius rotors in the St Lawrence.
The tip speed is a function of the blade density, which is the % of the swept area occupied by blades. A windpump such as you see on a farm has a blade density of 90-110% meaning in the latter case the edges overlap as seen by the wind. Darius made two-blade mills with 10% density. The tip speed of the windpump is about 1, i.e. the tip speed equals the wind speed. Darius’ thin long blades had a tip speed of 10.
Looking at a modern wind turbine, what do you suppose the blade density is? A Darius ‘egg beater’ rotor has a tip speed of about 6, typically. In a 50 km/hr wind they are moving at 300 khp in the centre (at the max radius).
So the turbines around Waterloo have a low blade density and while the rotational speed isn’t something to write home about, the tip speed is very high in max conditions. I presume they feather at Mach 1 or the neighbours would complain. It doesn’t take much of a wind to move the tip at 200 kph. Birds don’t have a chance.
Henryp should calculate the actual tip speed of those windmills. A good bit faster than any bird can fly or a bat.
NO ! Peregrine Falcons do NOT do 240 MPH in level flight.
G
Another topic that giffiepoo has been schooled on repeatedly. Yet here he baldly telling falsehoods and lies.
That eagle, scavenger and condor kill executive order Obama signed. If giffiepoo spoke even a little truth, there would have not been a need for twenty more years of eagle deaths.
Nor is giffiepoo’s tally of dead eagles versus eagle populations any where approaching fact.
The golden eagle that was recovering nicely has ceased improving their populations near wind mill farms.
even the wind mill farm owners themselves recognize that their wind turbine slaughter birds and bats while disrupting the health of all nearby living creatures.
giffiepoo’s steady litany of lies and falsehoods. Paid internet trollop who wastes the valuable time and lives of people.
Surely, the sickest of occupations.
@Henry: using round numbers… 150ft blade, means a 300ft Diameter. So the circumference pi*D would be about 900ft. If the blades rotate at 20 times per second, they each make a rotation in 3 seconds. 900ft/3sec is 200 ft per second. 200ft/sec is over 130mph at the tips. That’s going to kill birds.
Thanks all for responding to my request for calculating the rotor blades “tip speed” of a wind turbine.
Now ya’ll remember what Crispin in Waterloo stated above, to wit:
“ It doesn’t take much of a wind to move the tip at 200 kph. Birds don’t have a chance.”
Birds and bats that attempt to fly in the vicinity of functioning (rotating) wind turbines are subjected to the same “danger” as those children and adults (human) are that attempt to walk or run across streets or roadways whereon vehicles are travelling at various rates of speed (mph).
The big difference is, birds and bats are not nurtured to “STOP, LOOK and LISTEN” before going any farther.
EPA need to asses such disruption and put a price on it.
Example of minimum base level tariff to be paid —
Each bird — $10,000 minimum, rising to $250,000 for rare and endangered.
Each bat — $10,000 minimum, rising to $250,000 for rare and endangered.
Each animal — $125,000 minimum, rising to $500,000 for rare and endangered.
etc…
Maybe that would slow the environmental damage.
Under a banner of “You kill it, you pay it”
So you will also be keen to get fined if you hit a bird with your car, or a rabbit, let’s say $10 but a butterfly and $1500 if it is rare and endangered.
It is really heart warming to see how concerned people are here for preserving wildlife, though suggesting such draconian measures seems a little out of character. Perhaps there is a degree of hypocrisy at play.
One does get the inkling of an impression it may just be a convenient argument to oppose something they wish to oppose for other reasons.
Indeed fine everyone, fine them hard and fine them often.
“Perhaps there is a degree of hypocrisy at play. “?
Perhaps there is a degree of play in showing some hypocrisy…
Your EPA needs it.
tom0
You used ‘EPA’ and ‘asses’ in the same sentence. Are you trying to communicate something subtle?
Thank-you for assistance in pointing out the typo, or Freudian slip…
Gee, I’m approaching 1.5 million miles driving a big truck. I wonder how much I would have paid in fines by now for hitting animals?
I hate the fact that I have taken out some wildlife doing my job. The biggest was a cow elk I had to take her head on going west bound on I-40 about 13 miles east of Flagstaff, AZ. The latest was just earlier this week when I crushed an opossum. To my knowledge all of the mammals I have hit have been during the hours of darkness, usually in the early morning hours. All of the birds except a goose that flew into my drivers side west coaster mirror and then my side window one night, were hit during daylight or twilight hours. Thankfully I have never taken out any raptor though a couple of Red tail hawks have had close calls. When teaming one day when I was in the sleeper and my co-driver had the wheel a Mule deer ran right into the side of the 53′ trailer and went under and took out the air tank for the brakes and suspension of the trailer. Not a one of them was intentional and there have been a couple times I have probably maneuvered harder than I should have such as when I managed to miss Bambi going east bound on I-90 near Herkimer, NY. But there was no missing the elk cow. If you know your going to hit it you have to square up and take them head on because if a big animal like that goes under the tires on the side that is light due to your maneuver to miss it can flip the rig.
tom0
Is a bird not an animal?
Is a bat not an animal?
If ‘Yes’, then some redundancy in your tariff, I suggest.
But . . . .
What would you charge for a black rat?
Or an Anopheles mosquito, bringing malaria?
But, I agree that serious attention needs to be paid to the harm to wildlife, that despite Griff’s “comments” – equivocation; terminological inexactitudes; or simple mis-directional allusions [note, others have used other terms] – shall we say.
And most especially if the watermelons – in seeking to end Western Civilization – get a hundred-fold
expansion of their bird-and-bat-choppers?
And, presumably something to provide power when the wind blows too much, or not at all.
Or – does that not matter – closing power-using industry, so losing the direct jobs in the power station and factory or smelter, say?
– And the indirect jobs – shops; medical services from ante-natal to zygomatic surgery and all in-between; sewerage; car dealers, and mechanics, traffic wardens, stereo-suppliers etc.; transport tasks – rail, air, even sea-borne, including wharfies/longshoremen/dockers; A/C servicing and installation; lawn-mower sales and service; teachers; road repairers; university lecturers (the Vice Chancellors will cling on to their reasonably-remunerated [in their opinion] jobs (Up to £400,000 a year, in the UK)]; swimming pool installers and service staff; park-keepers [Like the London Borough of Croydon is doing, expecting volunteers to be able to replace a professional, full-time, and salaried staff]; utilized consumer goods collection and recycling operatives; even police and fire services – that the taxes – again, direct and indirect, and sales taxes – have long supported
Drive the productive jobs away, and the services and bureaucracy will soon follow.
Note for Theresa May – see line above.
But Stalin – like Corbyn – shows that that the general hollowing out of economies doesn’t work.
It is pure coincidence that those two have a common second syllable.
Do remember that Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, and Winnie the Pooh all have a common middle name.
Auto
My proposed tariffs apply exclusively to solar and windmill operators and the owners of the land they occupy.
I see no reason to penalize anyone else as only these greedy unreliable power providers require nations to massively industrialize large tracts of countryside thus ensuring many bird, bats are killed, while disturbing untold amounts of other wildlife.
“Many of the EPA’s regional offices and grant programs are redundant and should be abolished,”
Substitute Government for EPA and statement is still accurate.
So many agencies are infested with proud members of Environmental Activist Organizations, check more closely and you will see the minions being praised for their “social awareness”.
Yet such advocacy is a blatant conflict of interest.
Of course allowing the takers to vote is an even more obnoxious blow to taxpayers.
Pruitt should start with a plan to disestablish the EPA as such, and transfer any truly useful functions to other agencies. Whether it actually happens, which I really doubt, it would set the right kind of baseline.
EPA, sue-and-settle, regulating when there’s no congressional mandate or, really, anything more than illicit collusion with some eNGO.
The EPA also collected a 6.3 billion $ slush fund that had little Congressional oversight.
All these settlements should go into the general Treasury. Why do they not?
texas
Because the EPA is to a certain extent self-funding. The more they regulate and the more cash they get in fines, the more they can regulate. What’s not to like?
“…Environmental activists even filed suit against the U.S.-Mexico border wall being planned by the Department of Homeland Security, arguing it would hurt endangered species…”
That right there tells you it’s a political agenda and not an environmental one.
Yeah right. Mexican people smugglers are an endangered species now and it’s open season for hunting.
They are know to nest in small hollows in the ground in the desert. Their habitat and migratory routes would be severely disrupted by such a wall.
EPA has a duty to protect them.
Greg
I had a similar thought about illegal immigrants who would otherwise have to apply for a visa like Canadians in order to live and work in the USA.
With a wall in place and a few dozen crossing points manned by a few thousand legal Americans, they could sell visas to anyone who wanted one for the same price as the ‘coyotes’ charge now and the immigrants wouldn’t have to hide in under-paid work after crossing. It would make no difference to ‘the economy’ except for the money now heading south to criminal gangs that would come to the Feds instead. It would save a fortune in hopelessly trying to keep people out. If you want to visit Walt Disney’s Trumpland, buy a ticket like everyone else.
PS Disneyland has FAR better security than the US of A.
Nature and the laws of nature are under constant assault by the gimme-mo’s at EPA. The fact that this really is planet Earth escapes most of them.
So called “environmental” groups have been long ago abetted and co opted by the Marxists for their own goals and it’s time we stand up to it. Claiming, pretending , or believing it’s a “conspiracy theory” is exactly what they want. They’re trolling the world with their narrative and we let them get away with it.
The Department of Redundancy Department
Maybe the CEI should start with the Pentagon. It has never passed an audit despite
being mandated to since 1990. And in 2016 its financial errors were estimated to be
over $6.5 trillion (http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-accounting-errors/index.html). So while no doubt there are plenty of example of waste in the EPA’s budget of $5.6 billion if the CEI was serious about saving taxpayers money they should start with the Pentagon.
Pick any government department in you’ll find waste. Why the EPA over the Pentagon, you have to start somewhere.
If you are going to start anywhere why not start with the government departments that have never been
audited despite that being a legal requirement since 1990. And which are apparently lossing trillions of dollars. Which is enough money to fund the EPA in full for almost 1000 years. The EPA is peanuts when it comes to the total government spending.
And, of course, the Pentagon served a real need.
CEI and libertarians in general would like to see the military cut by 30-50% just as a start. All while still having the world’s most powerful military. For the past 20 years, the GOP has tried occasionally to eliminate many unneeded military bases but, of course, this is a political football and both parties say the other side is trying to cut mostly bases in areas that vote for their parties. Meanwhile, in theory, Repubs want to cut spending but they rarely if ever do it and of course they never cut military spending.
My solution for unneeded military bases is to make them holding areas for illegal immigrants waiting deportation.
Military establishments in urban areas all need to be closed! It isn’t conducive to the training needs of the forces to be forced to travel several hours to get to a decent exercise range. Urban areas are controlled by the Democrat party and they fight tooth and nail for retention of the facilities, yet complain incessantly about the noise of military operations. Rural areas are just glad of the jobs supporting the bases bring and have never cared about machine gun and artillery fire. Most rural areas are run by the Republican party.
The military’s goal is to have enough resources to fight a major and minor war at the same time, since we have multiple potential enemies.
The Defense Dept performs a useful function.
Hey, duplicating alien technology costs a fortune.
“Creating a potential conflict of interest” There’s nothing “potential” about it, it DOES create a conflict of interest. The honest ones will resist the temptation of allowing it to colour their opinions and reports, but it is obvious that this is a temptation that few can resist when their own incomes are affected.
The entire EPA is a nest of parasites and leeches. The task is simple: the more pollution you “find, discover”, or fabricate, the more money you get.
That could be said of all arms of govt. , the problem with EPA is that it has become subverted by political activists.
Pat Frank hits it on the head:
“EPA, sue-and-settle, regulating when there’s no congressional mandate or, really, anything more than illicit collusion with some eNGO.”
I have yet to see a govt dept or agency which could not be made more efficient.
But there is a difference between removing inefficiency and removing necessary regulation to increase corporate profit, or removing regulation due to political, not scientific, opinion
It is good to see you agree that the EPA has become so political and non scientific that it needs to be removed.
REPORT: ‘Many Of The EPA’s Functions Could Be Abolished’
That common sense idea could be applied across the board to most major departments, agencies, in the Federal Government. The recent fake news from the NYT on the climate report which supposedly had not been published but which in fact had been available on-line for months, stipulated that it took 13 agencies to produce it. Talk about redundancy! Then there is the DoD where they have the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Army Research Office (ARO), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). When applicable, the research activities of these agencies are coordinated with other Federally sponsored research via USGCRP and other entities all studying climate.
The DoD does need so many offices doing such research. One central multiservice office strictly with the mission of determining the impacts of climate and/or climate change on operations and equipment could do that alone. Besides history demonstrates when push comes to shove during military operations during war time weather and climate become secondary factors. The largest battle fought by the US in WW II in Europe is commonly known as “The Battle of the Bulge”. The battle was fought during the dead of the winter of 44-45 which turned out to be the worst in 50 years or more in western Europe. Cold weather injuries and illnesses caused more casualties to US troops than all other causes combined during the battle. This occurred because the US high command decided to put the priority of transport of fuel, ammo, and the other necessities of war ahead of winter clothing and equipment during the late summer and fall of 1944 in order to try to extend the Pursuit phase beyond logistical limitations after the break out from Normandy. There are several other examples from that war and others that demonstrate that weather and climate are secondary considerations when it comes to planning and conducting operations.
Russian strategic military deployment to the arctic is now increasing, since the Russian military accepts the science and is planning for a continued decrease in arctic sea ice and improved sea routes in the region/access to minerals.
I assume they have climate researchers to advise on this: perhaps the US won’t.
The russian military is directed by the russian leadership who are well aware of the need to make arctic oil claims based on new and upcoming drilling and recovery TECHNOLOGY (and not warming) that may make it profitable in upcoming years/decades). The russians know full well that the arctic ice is not going anywhere, regardless of any such related statements which they use as convenient political cover for expanding military.
Given the amount of potential resources in the Arctic, it would be stupid not to do something to lay claim to it when and if the technology to do so is developed.
Once when working on a base closure for the Air Force, I tried to get the pertinent regulations and testing protocols for hazardous waste from the EPA for planning purposes. This was official business from one government agency to another and the folks at EPA acted like I’d asked them for atomic bomb plans or something. I spent over a year trying to get the protocols so we could assess what sort of mitigation efforts would be needed to close the facility. I have never had so much trouble getting needed information from any other government agency. Transparency isn’t something they do!
It’s very clear the EPA is here to stay
Not for a year but ever and a day
Oh a twitter feed and the internet, movies that we know
May just be passing fancies and in time may go
But oh my dear the EPA is here to stay
Together we’re going on a long, long way
In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble
They’re only made of clay but the EPA is here to stay
with apologies to Ella and Louis…
‘Many Of The EPA’s Functions Could Be Abolished’
woulda, coulda, shoulda. Sorry for being a skeptic but Government never contracts.
Get back to me when you can write ‘Many Of The EPA’s Functions have been Abolished’ Until then it is just naive wishful thinking.
Do Washington politicians actually think they can run up $trillion dollar deficits forever ? Apparently so .
If not , cut the BS and start eliminating departments that have outlived their usefulness . EPA for example .
The EPA pays lobbyist’s to lie and undermine the public interest to fulfill their globalist agenda .
Delegate 80% of environmental work to the States who already have massive environment staff and budgets . The EPA should fit in a building the size of two tennis courts .
Re; Boris comments . Right on . Moonbeam North and the Liberals who shoved a carbon tax down
the throats of BC voters are only being protected by the real-estate money laundering business killing .They have chosen to kill the chances of local kids ever owning a home without a one way 70 KM commute .
How is it that in a span of 20 years Asia owns Vancouver , Richmond and soon the North Shore .
What ever happened to a balanced immigration policy ? What’s with 35-40 % of immigrants from China , many paying $2- $3 million cash owning multiple houses . What’s with UBC a whites need not apply
University that the tax payers of BC picked up the tab for .