Junk science has exploded thanks to the Internet.  It’s easier than ever to strike fear in the hearts of consumers by using words like “toxic” or worse, “cancer” in association with a given product.  Some of you may remember the Alar hoax. Nowadays, junk science finds willing advocates in form of uninformed celebrities who endorse their misguided causes. The latest example of embracing myth and fear over truth and reason is Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Dr. Oz has cynically leveraged his celebrity status into becoming an irresponsible spokesman against products Americans use daily, whose safety is beyond question.  He’s disgraced his status as physician by becoming an agent of fear, rather than an agent of healing.

Even worse, the mainstream media perpetuates junk science without vetting anything Dr. Oz says.  They report his nonsense, but never the criticism of it.  Nor does the MSM bother to investigate the anti-capitalist group supporting him.

Dr. Oz has irresponsibly generated public fear about dozens of safe products…and by “safe”, I mean scientific studies with rigorous protocols that have determined they are exactly that:

Apple Juice

What the … ? Is he serious?  I’m afraid so.  He recently made the outrageous assertion that apple juice is unsafe because of the amount of total arsenic found in it.  The EPA, he says, permits 10 parts per billion (ppb) of arsenic in water, but has no standards for apple juice., so he uses the same 10ppb as the toxicity level for apple juice.

Water is not apple juice.

Not only does the FDA permits 23ppb of total arsenic in apple juice, but virtually every step along the supply chain tests for arsenic levels.  Even in China, farmers are trained on how to properly cultivate apples and arsenic levels in soil are measured.  When the apple concentrate arrives in the U.S., the FDA conducts random checks.  Manufacturers then rehydrate the concentrate into juice, and test every lot.  If total arsenic exceeds 23ppb, they toss it.

Oz’s report was so misleading report that the FDA took the unprecedented step of debunking the claim publicly.  The FDA also reminds us that only inorganic arsenic, as opposed to organic arsenic, is toxic, and that dearest Dr. Oz tested for total arsenic. In addition, the FDA did the same testing on one brand’s apple juice that Dr. Oz did, and came up with results that showed ninety percent less total arsenic.  As the FDA responded to Oz, “The analysis of foods can pose a challenge to analytical laboratories and seemingly minor variations in sample treatment and analysis can have a significant effect on results.”

No kidding.

As Rick Cristol, President of the Juice Products Association told me, “The Juice Products Association, its member companies and even the FDA provided Dr. Oz Show producers with substantial information to develop a factually accurate program.  Yet, Dr. Oz chose instead to frighten the public with misleading and inaccurate information, that the former Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control, and now a broadcast reporter, described as yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

Yet the mainstream media pays no attention to any of this.  They just perpetuate the fear by reporting on what Dr. Oz had to say — not his critics.

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From Accuracy in Media’s Michael Watson:

In a news analysis article, Reuters looked at Republican efforts to stymie the activism of the Environmental Protection Agency, which has increased its regulatory efforts under President Obama. Reuters, in keeping with the post-Giffords “new civility,” characterizes the Republican efforts as an “assault of similar vigor” to that which accompanied the debt ceiling increase.

Reuters’ second paragraph asserts that Republican opposition is “backed by wealthy conservative lobbyists.” The report asserts that the EPA is the “last bastion of hope for [President Obama’s] environmental policy” after his “push for a climate bill in Congress collapsed last year.”

It collapsed in a Democrat-controlled Congress for good political reason, too. Popular opposition to cap-and-trade in the U.S. led to the loss of two long-held Democratic House seats in 2010 as well: Morgan Griffith (R-VA) defeated the former chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, Rick Boucher, who co-authored the cap-and-trade proposal in a Virginia coal-country seat that Boucher had held since 1983. In Minnesota’s Iron Belt, retired Northwest Airlines pilot Chip Cravaack defeated Jim Oberstar, the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who had served since 1975 and supported President Obama’s cap-and-trade plan as well as an extension of the Clean Water Act opposed by his constituents. Elsewhere, in Australia, a similar effort by the Australian Labor Party to institute a tax on carbon dioxide has seen that party fall to devastating lows in opinion polls.

Reuters notes that Richard Nixon’s administration established the EPA, calling it “ironic” that Republicans now oppose its expanded authority. Of course, Nixon was no Goldwater-Reagan conservative. He once said that “I am now a Keynesian in economics” and instituted wage and price controls.

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The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

Transcript: President Obama Press Conference

East Room

8: 03 p.m. EST

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good evening. I have a brief statement, and then I’ll take a question . . . uh, excuse me. Jay, what?

CARNEY: [from side of room] Sir, you agreed to take five questions.

OBAMA: Oh, right. Everyone, a follow-up counts as a separate question. Don’t screw your colleagues.

As I have said repeatedly since attending Basuki Elementary in Jakarta, America’s national debt is unsustainable. My budget confronts head-on what the scrawny fella from Indiana recently called the new “Red Menace.”

Like New Jersey’s Fat Man, I understand the realities. You heard it here: OMB’s first draft for FY 2012 came in at $8.7 trillion. I told them that was unacceptable. After weeks of chainsawing through the bloat, OMB Director Jacob Lew finally delivered the $3.73 trillion budget I just submitted to the House.

I see some heads shaking. Look, the final product does indeed represent a savings of almost $5 trillion off the initial proposal. Extrapolating from similar budget scenarios each cycle through FY 2016, and taking into account hyperinflation and debt servicing, we stand to chop about $60 trillion in spending over the next five years. In so doing, we’ll keep the deficit monster at bay a while longer. (more…)

In a column she posted at the Huffington Post, USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson continued in her attempts to rebrand the Agency into something it never has been nor was intended to be: a creator of wealth. Jackson surely recognizes that the tired, old “sky is falling” message that has traditionally driven environmental agendas has less traction than ever given the economic realities of 2010. So, while she isn’t ready to abandon the fear-mongering tactics that are ingrained in the green movement, Jackson is working hard to create a parallel reality, one in which there is an absolutely phenomenal return on investment whenever the government imposes a new round of environmental regulations.

In a draw-dropping example of the old saw that “correlation does not equate to causation” the administrator told America that the Clean Air Act has created a venerable cornucopia of riches:

“…as air pollution has dropped over the last 40 years, our national GDP has risen by 207 percent. The total benefits of the Clean Air Act amount to more than 40 times the costs of regulation. For every one dollar we have spent, we have received more than $40 of benefits in return, making the Clean Air Act one of the most cost-effective things the American people have done for themselves in the last half century.”

How does one calculate a whopping 4,000% return on Clean Air Act investments? If you’re the EPA, you point to increased productivity that you happily attribute to less lost time due to illness in the workplace, as well as avoided medical costs. Not that you actually have to prove that any of those results actually occur. All you need is a few pointy-headed academics with calculators who can punch the right numbers, attach a certain value to sick days and medical condition and – voila – you too can create trillions in phantom economic benefits.

That’s the method that has been used to justify just about every major piece of Clean Air regulation and Jackson’s EPA has shifted this technique into hyper-drive. If the numbers that she uses to justify the sweeping, radical environmental initiatives her Agency is pushing are to be believed, nobody will ever miss work again and the health care industry will have to close its doors for a lack of business. And yes, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. (more…)

Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but some opinions are just plain embarrassing. In a June 8 Op-Ed published in the New York Times, Stanford University professor Jon A. Krosnick postulated that the vast majority of Americans believe that global warming is both real and man-made, and – ergo – Senators would be well-advised to vote against the Murkowski Resolution when it comes to a vote today.

It’s pretty obvious that Krosnick, a professor of communication, political science and psychology, doesn’t actually understand the subject matter or what the Murkowski resolution is about. He starts his Op-Ed by declaring:

On Thursday, the Senate will vote on a resolution proposed by Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, that would scuttle the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to limit emissions of greenhouse gases by American businesses.

And he closes with this piece of advice:

When senators vote on emissions limits on Thursday, there is one other number they might want to keep in mind: 72 percent of Americans think that most business leaders do not want the federal government to take steps to stop global warming. A vote to eliminate greenhouse gas regulation is likely to be perceived by the nation as a vote for industry, and against the will of the people.

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Hard as it to imagine, a recent government report was so ridiculously hysterical that even the New York Times noticed. The President’s Cancer Panel’s released a report entitled “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk,” which led to this Times’ headline:

U.S. Panel Criticized as Overstating Cancer Risks.

The verb “overstating” doesn’t go half far enough, but coming from theTimes that’s still pretty damning. The report was a collection of conjecture, unrelated factoids and, more than anything, a shrill call for more: more government, more studies and, of course, more money. Even the American Cancer Society found it a bit over the top. From the Times:

Dr. Michael Thun, an epidemiologist from the cancer society, said in an online statement that the report was “unbalanced by its implication that pollution is the major cause of cancer,” and had presented an unproven theory — that environmentally caused cases are grossly underestimated — as if it were a fact.

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Nobody has to read the 2,310 pages of the health care bill to know why it will ruin health care in America. You don’t have to go any further than page 49, which marks the end of Subtitle E, “Governance,” to understand what’s coming. Subtitle E creates the office of the “Health Choices Commissioner,” the person charged with putting into effect all of the wonderful regulatory mechanisms that H.R. 4872 demands. But, in the regulatory sense, the Commissioner is not a person. The Commissioner is rather an institution, one that will have powers and responsibilities unprecedented in American history.

Even if Obamacare immediately did all of the things that the president claims it will (which I don’t for a minute believe); even if lowered the deficit, reduced the cost of health care, improved the quality of that care and increased access to it, does anyone who has ever dealt with any of today’s bloated, creeping, undead regulatory agencies of government actually believe that such a happy situation would last? If there is one thing that those of us who deal with government bureaucracy know, it is this: government bureaucracy never gets better, never increases in efficiency and never costs less. Never.

In my business, the environmental industry, the EPA has a position analogous to Health Choices Commissioner: EPA Administrator. Practically everything that the EPA does, on the federal and state levels, flows down from the power granted to the EPA Administrator. A president can appoint a marvelous Administrator, or a terrible one (Obama’s choice, Lisa Jackson, falls into the latter category) but it really doesn’t matter. The choice of the figurehead sitting on top of the pyramid is merely the difference between the thousands of thousands of bureaucrats on the bottom – the people who actually interact with the regulated community – creating a pile of obstacles the size of Mt. Everest to obstruct industry, or a pile the size of Mt. McKinley. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because you can’t get over, around, under or through the obstructions. (more…)

If you live in a coal state, make no mistake about it: Barack Obama and the Administrator of his USEPA, Lisa Jackson, are looking to take you down, by any means – direct or indirect – at their disposal. Among the schemes in the pipeline is this: a proposal that would make burning coal to produce power a much more expensive proposition, by attaching billions of dollars more costs before the residue of the coal-burning process could be reused or disposed of. Ironically, Obama and Jackson are on the threshold of making an ill-considered decision that would undermine one of the most successful recycling programs in the history of the nation.

USEPA is deciding whether or not to declare the ash that remains after burning coal a hazardous waste. The agency began considering reclassification following a disastrous release of 1.7 million cubic yards of fly ash from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston plant, a large coal-fired power station located east of Knoxville, Tennessee, in December 2008. That release, caused by the failure of an earthen retention wall, caused many environmental groups to renew their call for the USEPA to classify coal ash as a hazardous waste.

The Sierra Club, and other environmental groups, maintain that this action is necessary because coal ash contains, among other things:”…arsenic, selenium, lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, boron, thallium, and aluminum – toxic heavy metals that have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and neurological disorders, and which clearly threaten nearby communities and ecosystems.” (more…)

Many have declared the dubious “Cap and Trade” scheme dead, so Obama went ahead and had the EPA suggest they were going to impose it under their own regulations. The truth is, they’re not likely to do that. They want the “Climate Bill” to pass because it’s designed to gouge the energy and manufacturing sector out of $646 billion in tax dollars over ten years. All to finance his crypto-socialist programs.

The Democrats see the climate bill as a cash cow, but Republicans aren’t buying it. So in his State of the Union address, the president didn’t mention cap and trade. He mentioned the “green jobs” that would be created by the “Climate bill.”

But to create more of these clean-energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.

Doesn’t that sound swell? Except nuclear power plants are already safe and sound in the US and have been for over 50 years. (more…)

This April, USEPA expects to finalize a rule intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from mobile sources (cars, trucks, buses, etc.), largely by demanding greater fuel economy in the transportation sector. No doubt there will be much rejoicing among the tree-hugging set when that happens, but there is another consequence to that action that has largely flown under the old media’s radar: the day that the mobile source rule goes final is the day that the Agency starts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other large industrial sources.

It’s a matter of regulatory logic. Once the Agency starts to regulate a pollutant in one sector, it must regulate said pollutant in all sectors under its purview. When and if this side effect of the mobile source rule come to light, it will – no doubt – be used as a “gotcha moment” by environmentalist groups and the old media. “See, now EPA is going to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Act, because you wouldn’t give us cap and trade. We waaaarned you!” (more…)

You’ve read the stories. You’ve seen the quotes and the scary pictures and graphics. Unless the Senate passes a cap and trade bill to regulate (aka: tax) greenhouse gas emissions, the USEPA will regulate those emissions through the Clean Air Act and – cue ominous music – you’re not going to like that.

Don’t buy it. It’s a bluff. The last thing that the Obama administration and USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson want to do is to try to regulate greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act. It would be a nightmare for the USEPA, creating enmity among large swathes of the populace, forcing people to reassess the shaky science behind global warming and it would take many, many years to implement the regulatory measures necessary to actually reduce these emissions. The Clean Air Act threat is a desperate attempt at extortion, with the ultimate goal of forcing a pointless cap and trade bill down our throats.

Trust me here. I’m an expert on two things: 1) the best places to enjoy a cold beer in the southeast side of Chicago, and 2) air pollution regulation, especially the Clean Air Act. Indeed, I wrote the book. (Which I encourage nobody to buy, because, unless you happen to manage environmental affairs for some industrial concern, it will bore you to tears). Even given Barack Obama’s vaunted talent for ignoring and working around rules that he finds inconvenient, the Clean Air Act presents too many insurmountable obstacles for even an “Ocean Reversing Czar” to overcome. The reasons why are complicated, but we’ll do this in a couple of parts and – hopefully – I’ll keep the explanations entertaining enough that you won’t fall asleep.

Let’s start here: exposing the tyranny of the system: (more…)