Michael Bastasch | Energy Editor
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler fired back at a Yahoo News report who misquoted him in a widely-shared tweet.
“One of the reporters, a yahoo from Yahoo News — he’s working at the right place,” Wheeler joked before detailing why the reporters tweet was inaccurate. (RELATED: Joe Biden Signals Willingness To Provoke A Trade War With China Over Global Warming)
“That tweet was picked up by New York Times reporters, who weren’t at the event,” Wheeler said in a speech to the American Iron and Steel Institute and the Steel Manufacturers Association in Washington, D.C. “Now the Sierra Club is using it for fundraising.”
“Really makes me wonder whether or not the New York Times was purposely providing material for the Sierra Club to fundraise,” Wheeler said in video footage obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation from an audience member.
Yahoo’s Alexander Nazaryan claimed on Twitter that Wheeler said “‘[t]he media does a disservice to the American public’ by reporting on global warming” while speaking at the National Press Club on Monday.
“The media does a disservice to the American public" by reporting on global warming, says EPA head Andrew Wheeler. Wants more positive coverage.https://t.co/YYVs4vqTwi
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) June 3, 2019
Nazaryan’s article for Yahoo claimed “Wheeler was clearly alluding to the growing media attention to climate change” when chastising the media for “focusing on only dire environmental news.”
Nazaryan’s tweet gained traction with reporters and environmental activists, including The New York Times’ climate change reporter.
https://twitter.com/KendraWrites/status/1135660275124887553
EPA officials put out a “fact-check” of Nazaryan’s coverage, calling it “false.” Wheeler was speaking to “biases in coverage regarding the Trump Administration’s EPA,” officials said Tuesday.
Wheeler, who was confirmed in February, said “the media does a disservice to the American public and sound policy-making by not informing the public of the progress this nation has made” in reducing pollutants. Wheeler added that he was not trying to “minimize” current environmental challenges.
Wheeler also laid out the points he says the media keeps getting wrong about the EPA and said the improvements in air and water quality since the 1970s need to be “noted more often” in the press.
Andrew Wheeler listed points that he says the press "consistently gets wrong" when reporting on EPA:
• that there's an ongoing war within EPA
• that I was a former coal lobbyist
• that the environment is getting worse
• that we're rolling back regulations pic.twitter.com/ZcXOtnDNhT— POLITICO (@politico) June 3, 2019
“That’s part of the problem we have delivering this message to the American public,” Wheeler said in his Tuesday speech to iron and steel industry representatives.
“The advances that you all as an industry have made to clean up the environment, the recycling that you’re doing, getting 7 million switches, reducing mercury pollution by 8 million tons,” Wheeler said. “Those are impressive numbers and those numbers need to be told, people need to understand the progress everyone collectively has made over the last 40 years.”
“Anyone who thinks that they can see the future with certainty has a bright future reporting for the Guardian, Huffington Post, Wash Post, LA Times, CNN, NY Times.”
Anonymous Heins
P.S. Fact checkers are forming a long unemployment line.
https://www.nationalreview.com/g-file/problem-with-certainty/amp/
From where I sit the situation is similar.
To clarify I would add.. “In Canada concerning the issue of man-made global warming” anyone who thinks that they can see the future with certainty has a bright future reporting for the “Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, CTV, TVO and the CBC”.
Ignorance dominates, around the world (accept for Trump) it appears consistent…all of our academic, governing, media and corporate elites are on board the good ship AGW.
Time to quote:
“What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.”
Richard Lindzen, Professor Emeritus, Earth Sciences, M.I.T.
oops…except, not accept.
So true! And here in French Canada he could easily work for Radio-Canada (French CBC) the official federal government global warming scare station, and also for Télé Québec (Québec government financed). Private station TVA is a less fixated.
Good read!
Or a long future at Sportsbet working out when to start paying winnings for events that haven’t happened yet.
For those not following Australia, in our recent Federal Election (ie – the big important one) the MSM et al were so utterly convinced that the ALP (left wing) were going to win that Sportsbet started paying out winnings. They basically gave away a couple of million dollars before someone noticed that despite what the MSM had firmly stated, Scott Morrison (semi-conservative) had returned his party to power.
This is the big public ‘ha ha – look at those Sportsbet idiots’ story, but scratch a little deeper and all sorts of other stories emerge that are built around the fact that the Media firmly stated that Bill Shorten was going to be the next Prime Minister. We have stories of Labor politicals (aka the side that lost) pre booking removalists and Liberal (aka the side that won) staffers needing to cancel holidays they had planned, all based on the fact there was going to be a major change in Canberra.
Then there is the private business part of the equation. In the Day Job my workmates were confidently told that we had nothing to worry about with the new incoming government because senior members of the company had been in long discussions with the Shadow Ministers (ie the pre-election opposition) and that our company was well placed to react to any changes in government policy and legislation.
Well… I know hindsight is a wonderful thing, but that definitely was a significantly amount of time my employers are never going to get back.
This is just Australia, but the point being made here is that the Media, our guiding hand and defender of truth, GOT IT WRONG and in very real terms, cost Australia a significant amount of money.
When does the media stop being simply gaff prone and evolve into being a legitimate danger?
Open question.
Reporting good news about the environment doesn’t make headlines or sound bites. Yet the primary line coming out of most of news outlets much of my long life has been the world is coming to an end if we don’t stop some associated with the USA, capitalism, etc. If I tell you air pollution since the 1960s has improved by 70+% one might think it would make a wonderful news story; one would be wrong.
It is about here where everyone should fully realize that neither the environmental organizations, nor the news media, nor those politicians they both support give a happy damn about the environment. The game is ALL about power and control. I have been told more than once by prominent environmental lobbyists and their attorneys that you and I cannot function without the government telling us how, when and where. And their primary goal for governmental change, some form of socialism, usually one that sounds far more like National Socialism than Swedish Socialism.
“Bernie Sanders: Soviet Union, Venezuela don’t count as examples of failed socialism”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bernie-sanders-soviet-union-venezuela-not-examples-failed-socialism
Well, yeah, if they didn’t count all the free throw misses, I would have won the Knights of Columbus Free Throw Contest…
Socialism works. If it fails it wasn’t Socialism.
The fact is you can’t implement full socialism without a totalitarian government.
That’s the only way to prevent the producers from running away.
I guess you could say that nobody wants to work, that’s why they pay us money to work. Socialism is based on the assumption that everybody pulls their weight and does good for the good of the community. Whereas, reality is virtually opposite.
Reminds me of the old Soviet saying: “They pretend to pay us, so we pretend to work.”
In other words, socialism is based upon the false premise that people can be altruistic all or most of the time. They can’t. It isn’t human nature. People can appear to be altruistic here and there, now and then, for brief periods of time. The only people that are ‘altruistic’ 24/7 are slaves, and they don’t have any choice in the matter.
Heh.
Reminds me of the line: There is no such thing as alternative medicine.
If it works, it isn’t alternative.
If it doesn’t, it isn’t medicine.
Another goofy opinion from Barmy Sandinisters.
For much of modern news media good news in no news.
Natural and human-made disasters, war, pestilence, human depravity, environmental destruction and every other conceivable adverse observation are just the sort of entertainment the modern “news” organization uses to sell advertising and snuggle up to corrupt politicians. Veracity to a modern news editor is just the name of a town they’ve never visited and can’t find on a map.
To be expected .
The alarmists are losing their grip on the populace and
are doubling down …. it’s lies all the way down now .
It always was, it’s just that now they’re getting more blatant about it.
And all the Twits on Tweeter just pick up and run with it, expounding the GIGO effects of Tweeter
Which means that their fervency will only appeal to the mentally ill.
Biden’s China Tariff threat to force Climate Change compliance is the very first pronouncement of this sort from any high profile Climate Alarmist Leftist.
I have always considered the silence from the Alarmists regarding the very large projected Asian CO2 emissions growth as proof that they don’t REALLY believe in Climate Catastrophe.
If we are all gonna die if China, India, Southeast Asia…etc. doesn’t curb CO2 emissions, you’d expect that the pleas and demands to Asia would be deafening…instead….crickets.
The AGW leadership will not push China on climate, BECAUSE THEN THE CHINESE SCIENTISTS, who are not really worried about the climate, would trash the AGW meme with actual Science as part of their defense. That public discussion must never happen.
I suspect that Joe is going “off the reservation” on the hoax…or he’s not really in on the plan.
He’s also been talking about using Nuclear Energy as a solution to Climate Armageddon. The Alarmist leadership DOES NOT want a technical solution since that would obviate the need for edicts from Worldwide Centralized Authoritarian Socialism to save the world…with them at the helm, of course.
There has to be a point where there are enough regulations. Past that point, more regulations become counterproductive. In other words, it is quite possible for environmental regulations to be bad for the environment.
As far as I can tell, there’s no formal mechanism that prevents over regulation.
but you must have more…who will regulate those that regulate the regulations???
Quis custodiet custodies ipsos?
Depends on the purpose of the regulations. If it is solving a real world problem, probably yes. If it is the exercise of pure power in order to impoverish, humiliate, and demoralize the peasants, there is no limit.
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
“Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. … There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.”
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79n/chapter3.3.html
‘If it is solving a real world problem, probably yes.’
As if governments won’t declare that everything they do is to solve a real world problem.
Sorry, you can’t trust government with the power to regulate. They will not constrain themselves.
What the…???
200,000 tons per year for 40 yrs ?
reducing mercury pollution by 8 million tons,” Wheeler said
Agree w/y’all — the real amount is closer to 8 million ounces…..
@ Mark….
I would be surprised if any measures of mecury pollution or another 50 compounds designated as pollutants are higher now than in 1975. Of course, back then some of the things we are now concerned with were not deemed “pollutants” – – like carbon dioxide.
Gums sends…
Yes, he meant over the last 40 yrs we have reduced mercury pollution by 8 million tons,…
Yes, I agree that mercury emissions are *far* lower than they were in 1975. The biggest contributors to this reduction probably include: 1) mercury cell chlor-alkali manufacturing has been replaced by membrane-based chlor-alkali manufacturing, 2) much more stringent emission requirements for municipal waste combustion facilities, 3) much more stringent limits on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.
But it was the 8 *million* tons that I can’t understand. The annual reductions in mercury emissions from items 2 and 3 above is probably less than 200 tons per year in the U.S.. And while I don’t know about item #1 without a little more research, I’d be shocked if the emissions were over 10,000 tons per year of mercury in the U.S….even at the peak of mercury cell chlor-alkali manufacturing.
As Mark Broderick pointed out, 8 million tons would be 200,000 tons per year for 40 years. I don’t see any way in the world that sort of reduction has occurred…because I don’t see any way in the world that mercury emissions were 200,000 tons per year 40 years ago…or at any time in U.S. history.
Ambient levels of mercury in the environment through the last 40 years can be estimated from mercury concentrations in human blood (see Figure 2-2 of this report):
https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1395/pdf/circ1395.pdf
There’s simply no way that measurements of mercury concentrations in human blood could be matched to an 8 million ton reduction in mercury emissions in the U.S.
P.S. I wonder if Andrew Wheeler meant *lead* reductions of 8 million tons, rather than mercury reductions. That 8 million ton reduction might actually be reasonable for *lead*…due to elimination of tetraethyl lead from gasoline. It would be pretty bad if he meant lead, but said “mercury.”
Read
https://www.google.com/search?q=coal+burning+and+mercury&oq=coal+combustion+and+mer&aqs=chrome.
Funny I looked some of those links you posted, somehow all I looked at left out 98% of all mercury that falls to earth comes from the oceans. That been true for at least a hundred million years, so you really think what is emitted by humans is going to make a difference?
Well mercury is a naturally-occurring element after all. But much of that 98% you attribute to the oceans got there thanks to humans. I’ve seen the percentage attributed to natural sources as about 10%.
And yes, it makes a difference…look up Minamata disease.
The human element really comes into play by concentrating it. A small-level spread out over most of the world is not an issue. A high-level discharged to a small area is a big problem.
Mercury also bioaccumulates. It builds-up in the system of living organisms, and when they are eaten by predators, the mercury is passed-on. Small quantities out in the deep ocean may not be a big issue. But if we’re emitting and discharging it so that it ends up in rivers and shallow ocean, then you’re looking at high levels of mercury in fish and mammals.
“Read…”
I’m very familiar with mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. Check out the lead author for this fascinating research ;-):
https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_Report.cfm?Lab=NRMRL&dirEntryId=63440
Basically, that research looked at what happened to the mercury that went into the air prior to EPA’s mercury regulations for coal-fired power plants and is now going into coal combustion residues (aka, “coal combustion byproducts” by the coal-fired electrical power generation industry). The coal combustion residues/”byproducts” are things like fly ash and flue gas desulfurization material.
Prior to regulations, air emissions of mercury from coal-fired power plants were estimated at between 50 and 60 tons per year. So there’s no way you’ll get 8 *million* tons of mercury reduction from the mercury and air toxics regulations for coal-fired power plants.
Mark: All the elements that made up the Earth were there before the planet was built – the existing elements were simply collected, captured around the gravity center of the forming planet. Even today, the planets gain mass from existing elements – stardust.
Here is a 50+ tons per year drop….:^)
https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/3370_mercuryPowerPlants.pdf
Yes, I spent quite a bit of time studying where that 50 tons of mercury went after it was no longer going into the air (I’m the lead author for this report):
https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_Report.cfm?Lab=NRMRL&dirEntryId=63440
Google/Yahoo has “reporters”? Noooo…. they don’t report. They concoct and then they editorialize about what they concocted. I’m not sure exactly WHAT that is – liar maybe? No wait, I got it. They do get paid for what they produce so they are a PP, Professional Prevaricator.
presstitutes
Tomorrow’s headline, today: “Yahoo announces layoffs”
The “new” model of hiring inexperienced non-educated uni grads with impressive degrees in made-up nonsense, giving them titles and pixels and counting the ad revenue is dead.
People are tuning out.
FB and Twitter are next, believe it.
The power industry where I have spent my career has done great work at reducing air and water pollution. Most industries have done the same. We have removed millions of tons of SO2, NOx, particulates, SO3 along with other pollutants. The amount of mercury removed that Mr. Bahner seems to challenge is a good approximate number for all of mercury removed by industry in general. One of the biggest man made contributors of mercury to the environment was medical wastes. A lot of medical wastes contained mercury from thermometers and other instruments. The mercury was easily captured by injectiing carbon into the flue gas generated by the burning of medical wastes. Also they switched from mercury thermometers to digital ones. Other uses of mercury in the medical industry was also changed.
The power industry is now injecting carbon in the flue gas of boilers to remove the mercury. This is interesting in that the mercury concentrations are so low both coming in and going out it is not measured accurately. However the EPA still put in the regulations with limits knowing that we could not accurately measure it.
Also great strides in recycling the byproducts from the pollutants has been made. Concrete, cement, wallboard, soil stabilization, fertilizer are all recycled byproducts from the burning of coal.
The industry should be getting accolades for the work to clean the environment.
There’s a guy at the Monterey Bay AQMD who spent years looking at mercury emissions from funeral cremations (mercury from old dental fillings) and trying to get California interested in this issue. I always imagined the state-level Airborne Toxics Control Measure would say, “Thou shalt pull any teeth with fillings before cremating the cadaver.”
Someone please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong:
There is no such thing as climate or a climate. From what I’ve read the term was first introduced by Aristotle to represent 3 area on the planet. Since then a unit of climate is a 30 years period. Within that period atmospheric events and weather are measured and recorded.
Climate is a mental construct projected onto the world. Why 30 years? Why not 40 or 10? Because none of those 30 year measurements is like any before it and will never be repeated “climate change” (put forth as a problem) is meaningless. Where are they putting down their measuring devices to determine that there’s suddenly a problem with the change that a non-static climate unit naturally goes through?
Our invention of climate is our way of bringing meaning to the meaningless or order to the disorder of nature. Believing it existed before we came along has brought us “climate change.” Which is merely a reordering of the order that only exists in the human mind. Therefore it can only ever be a hypothesis. (and just utter nonsense)
The only Possible Climate Change I can see would be …
Desertification
Reforestation
Grasslandification
Glaciation
Deglciation
Most all other changes tend to fall under the realm of weather and are relatively short lived.
I remember learning all about the 7 climate Zones, now there are 12 Climate ‘regions’ apparently. There is no such thing as Singular Global ‘Climate’, and this is what starts the non-science of AGW. Focusing only on the Atmosphere while ignoring the Hydrosphere, Lithosphere and Biosphere is just plain stupid. CO2 cannot now , never has and never will be a pollutant or a driver of ‘climate’ in any of the climatic zones. You nailed it. It can only ever be a hypothesis – and is Utter Nonsense!
Thirty years is the length of an academic career. A climate scientist starts his career with some research and predictions and has thirty years in which his or her predictions can’t be challenged since they are “weather”. At career end when the climate scientist has successfully retired with a generous pension, then the predictions can be tested as “climate”. Of course, if the predictions are wrong, as is usually the case, the climate scientist’s career is not affected.
At the time, thirty years was the also length of the satellite record
” . . . first introduced by Aristotle . . . Since then a unit of climate is a 30 years period. ”
Nonsense.
30 years is a formalized reporting period for weather data.
True, climate is an abstract. There is climate history & that can have lingering effects, but the only thing experienced directly is real-time weather at specific localities.
Andrew Wheeler is a good man…period.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/sciences-untold-scandal-the-lockstep-march-of-professional-societies-to-promote-the-climate-change-scare/
Twelve scientific organizations have submitted an objection to current administration plans about regulations under the Clean Water Act. I recently got this from the society that I was a charter member of. I think they are new to policy. They are a coastal/estuarine not freshwater society. I quit among others some years ago due to expense.
“Re: Scientific Societies Comments on Proposed Rule -Revised Definition of “Waters of the United States”(84FR 4154; Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2018-0149)”
https://cerf.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/2019/Science%20Societies%20WOTUS%20Letter.pdf
I traced their citations back to this.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/65/4/408/254933
““Given the likelihood that any GIW [Geographically Isolated Wetlands] contributes to downstream water quality, we suggest that THE BURDEN OF PROOF COULD BE SHIFTED to assuming that all GIWs are critical for protecting aquatic systems until proven otherwise.” One section in the paper is “Shifting the burden of proof” so here we go again with the Precautionary Principle and we are all “guilty until proven innocent.” The question of before the action prevention (regulation) versus afterwards amelioration of effects has been around a long time, but property (and other) rights are being denigrated.” CAPITALS MINE!
Mark: All the elements that made up the Earth were there before the planet was built – the existing elements were simply collected, captured around the gravity center of the forming planet. Even today, the planets gain mass from existing elements – stardust.
Since the surface of the Earth is to more then 70% covered by the oceans 3 of 4 parts of new mercury is gathered by the oceans.
The hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming is a Scam. Everybody knows it…. even those who promote it know it’s a scam.
A higher atmospheric content of CO2 is actually beneficial rather than detrimental to the environment.
That’s a clear case of libel. Nazaryan purposely misquotes Wheeler with a malicious intent to defame him. That’s one Wheeler could win in court if he wants to. Don’t demand a correction, Wheeler. Your actual statement was reported properly by others. Take Nazaryan to court. It’s time to end the malicious lies of the lying liars who tell them.
Re. M.W. Plea. The Greenish “”Scientist” are far from being ignorant,
but as with all of us they like to be richer.
So if ignorant politicians want to make such scientist richer, why
discourage them.
Remember “Greed is good””.
MJE VK5ELL
Here we see “Kendra “Gloom is My Beat” Pierre-Louis” toeing the line of her editor’s required narrative bad-mouthing the EPA Director and pushing catastrophic Climate Change.
Several readers have accused my essays of demeaning Ms. Pierre-Louis — calling her names but we see in her twit that “Kendra “Gloom is My Beat” Pierre-Louis” is her self-chosen twit handle.
In my years of trying to correct some of the nonsense published in the NY Times, it has become apparent that, at least for climate science and environmental stories, they do absolutely NO Fact Checking — using whatever claims from the activist community suits their editorial narrative as “facts” — often even those obviously false to any educated reader.
Tony Heller has a very good video up today about a NYT story that is the exact opposite of the truth. https://youtu.be/9ypfKYlBQoY