The UN’s IPCC has NO Credibility on Global Warming

By Allan MacRae

In 2002 the PEGG, the journal of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA) solicited the following debate on the now-defunct Kyoto Accord (Kyoto Protocol), between Dr. Matthew Bramley and Matt McCullough, P.Eng. of the Pembina Institute, who supported the Kyoto Accord and relied upon the IPCC’s position, and Dr. Sallie Baliunas, Harvard Astrophysicist, Dr. Tim Patterson, Carleton Paleoclimatologist, and Allan MacRae, P.Eng., who opposed Kyoto based on scientific statements in their PEGG article and rebuttal.

Now, after 13 years, it is instructive to look back at the two positions and determine how they have fared.

One’s predictive track record is perhaps the only objective measure of one’s competence. The IPCC has a negative predictive track record, because ALL of its scary projections have failed to materialize. The IPCC thus has NO credibility, actually it has NEGATIVE credibility. Probabilistically; based the IPCC’s negative predictive track record, one would more correct if one assumed the opposite of the IPCC’s scary projections.

All the IPCC’s scary projections of catastrophic humanmade global warming, wilder weather, and climate change have failed to materialize, despite significant increases in atmospheric CO2, the purported driver of this falsely-predicted “weather weirding”. According to the best data from satellites, global temperatures measured in the Lower Troposphere (LT) have not increased significantly in about 18 years. Hurricane frequency and intensity are at record low levels. The climate has been remarkably stable despite substantial increases in atmospheric CO2.

The IPCC’s sycophants responded by falsifying the Surface Temperature (ST) record to overstate global warming:
See more.

In 2008 I calculated the “Warming Bias Rate” [for 1979 to end-2007] = (Hadcrut3 ST – UAH LT anomalies) / time
= 0.2C/2.8 decades or about 0.07C/decade. That was the apparent Warming Bias Rate in the ST versus the LT.
In 2015 the Warming Bias Rate [for 1979 to mid-2015] = (Hadcrut4 ST – UAH LT anomalies) / time
= [0.685 – 0.204]/3.5 decades = about 0.14/decade.

THIS IS TWICE THE WARMING BIAS RATE OF JUST ~6 YEARS AGO – AN UNBELIEVABLE INCREASE!

It is extremely improbable that the total (since 1979) difference in the (ST minus LT) temperature anomalies diverged this much in just 6 years. It is much more probable that the ST data was falsified to overstate global warming.

Pembina in its 2002 Rebuttal quoted the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report Summary for Policymakers as follows:
“In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations…
The globally averaged surface temperature is projected [in business-as-usual scenarios] to increase by 1.4 to 5.8º C over the period 1990 to 2100.”

In reality, the only quality data – from satellites – shows NO significant global warming for the past 18 years!

Pembina further stated:
“The IPCC, however, finds good agreement between model simulations and observed temperature over the past 140 years, including the temperature increase up to 1940, if the simulations include solar variation and volcanic activity along with emissions of GHGs and particulates.”

In reality, the models quoted by the IPCC have grossly over-predicted the amount of future global warming. These models were utterly corrupted by fabricated aerosol data that was used to justify an incredibly high climate sensitivity to CO2 (ECS). The fabricated aerosol data was used to force the models to hindcast the global cooling that occurred circa 1940 to 1975. This false aerosol data was literally created “out of thin air” and is contradicted by actual data. See Dr. Douglas V. Hoyt’s comments here.

The IPCC and its sycophants have fabricated a false scenario of catastrophic humanmade global warming and wilder weather that has NO credibility and is contradicted by two decades of data. There is evidence of the falsification of climate model inputs and surface temperature data to overstate claims of global warming. .

In comparison, let us review the eight predictions we made on our 2002 Rebuttal [my comments in brackets]:

Kyoto has many fatal flaws, any one of which should cause this treaty to be scrapped.

Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist. [NO net global warming has occurred for about 18 years.}

Kyoto focuses primarily on reducing CO2, a relatively harmless gas, and does nothing to control real air pollution like NOx, SO2, and particulates, or serious pollutants in water and soil. [Note pollution in China and former Soviet Union.]

Kyoto wastes enormous resources that are urgently needed to solve real environmental and social problems that exist today. For example, the money spent on Kyoto in one year would provide clean drinking water and sanitation for all the people of the developing world in perpetuity. [Since the start of global warming hysteria, about 50 million children below the age of five have died from contaminated water.]

Kyoto will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and damage the Canadian economy – the U.S., Canada’s biggest trading partner, will not ratify Kyoto, and developing countries are exempt. [Canada adopted Kyoto but then most provinces wisely ignored it – the exception being now-depressed Ontario, where government drank the Kool-Aid.]

Kyoto will actually hurt the global environment – it will cause energy-intensive industries to move to exempted developing countries that do not control even the worst forms of pollution. {Note the air in China.]

Kyoto’s CO2 credit trading scheme punishes the most energy efficient countries and rewards the most wasteful. Due to the strange rules of Kyoto, Canada will pay the former Soviet Union billions of dollars per year for CO2 credits.
[We shamed our government into not paying the FSU, but other governments did so, to bribe them to sign Kyoto.]

Kyoto will be ineffective – even assuming the overstated pro-Kyoto science is correct, Kyoto will reduce projected warming insignificantly, and it would take as many as 40 such treaties to stop alleged global warming. [IF one believed the utterly false climate models, one would probably conclude that we must cease fossil fuel consumption.].

The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels. [Those governments who adopted “green energy” schemes such as wind and solar power are finding these schemes are not green and produce little useful energy. Their energy costs are soaring and those governments are in retreat, dropping their green energy subsidies as they try to save face.]

In summary, all our predictions have proven correct in those venues that fully embraced the now-defunct Kyoto Accord, whereas none of the IPCC’s scary projections have materialized.

So what happens next? Will we see catastrophic humanmade global warming? No, our planet will cool.  Link [excerpts]

I (we) predicted the commencement of global cooling by 2020-2030 in an article published in the Calgary Herald in 2002. That prediction is gaining credibility as solar activity [in current SC24] has crashed… It is still early in the prediction game, but SC25 is also projected to be very weak, so we will probably experience two consecutive very-weak Solar Cycles in SC24 and SC25… IF the Sun does indeed drive temperature, as I suspect, then successive governments in Britain and continental Europe have brewed the perfect storm. They have crippled their energy systems with excessive reliance on ineffective grid-connected wind power schemes. I suggest that global cooling probably WILL happen within the next decade or sooner, and Europe [and the world] will get colder, possibly much colder. I suggest that Winter deaths will increase in the Europe as cooling progresses. I suggest that Excess Winter Mortality rates will provide an estimate of this unfolding tragedy.

Timing is difficult to estimate, but I now expect global cooling to be evident by 2020 or sooner.

Is July of 2015 the warmest ever? Not even close.

NOAA reported:

The July 2015 average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.46°F (0.81°C) above the 20th century average. As July is climatologically the warmest month for the year, this was also the all-time highest monthly temperature in the 1880–2015 record, at 61.86°F (16.61°C), surpassing the previous record set in 1998 by 0.14°F (0.08°C).

“It just reaffirms what we already know: that the Earth is warming,” said NOAA climate scientist Jake Crouch. “The warming is accelerating and we’re really seeing it this year.”

NASA reported a global anomaly of 0.72C (1.29°F), also the highest in their entire record (base period for comparison 1951-1990).

Sure looks conclusive. But global data bases are seriously flawed and easily manipulated and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends.

Numerous versions of the global data have been issued in the past 25 years. Each one produced more and more of an apparent warming, accomplished by cooling the past and allowing urban heat island to run rampant in recent decades. See this NASA change graph DIFFERENCE from the latest version in 2015 from the version in 2008. You can see it has increased the apparent warming from the 1930s to the present by about 0.3C (0.5F).

The net effects of the adjustments made since May 2008 are to generate a more smoothly increasing global temperature since 1880. In fact most all of the claimed warming is in the adjustments to the data.

This is before NCDC adds the adjustments to get the results demanded for. Predictably, NOAA and NASA adjusted their July temperatures as they did in June and May and in 2014 just enough to be able to make the claims warmest ever, all leading up to the UN treaty in Paris later this year.

Meteorologists and in fact NOAA itself in their models ignores this ‘adjusted data’. NOAA uses many raw data inputs to construct a high-resolution global analysis four times a day that is used to initialize the all the models (including their climate models) used by forecasters in government and industry. Weatherbell’s Dr. Ryan Maue compiled the four times a day data going back to 1981 and computes in real-time our own monthly global picture. You will notice with a base period of 1981-2010, the anomaly globally is not even close to NOAA’s 0.81C nor NASA’s 0.72C but just 0.155C. Some of the difference has to do with the base period used for the averages to compute anomalies but most of it is in the adjustments and blending techniques and how they infill for large data gaps or widespread missing surface station data.

Notice the very cold Southern Hemisphere high latitude oceans/ Antarctic, ignored by NOAA though included by NASA.

The temperatures in this reanalysis data shows no warming for over 10 years and the +0.155C anomaly is in the middle of the pack of Julys for the last decade, not the warmest ever. It ranked 10th warmest in the last 20 years.

SATELLITE DATA

Since 1979, NOAA satellites have been carrying instruments, which measure the natural microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere. The intensity of the signals these microwave radiometers measure at different microwave frequencies is directly proportional to the atmospheric temperatures.

The advantage of the satellites is they provide complete global coverage, and are not biased by local heat sources like most weather instruments in cities or airports.

There are two satellite remote sensing groups the NASA UAH site in Huntsville, Alabama and Remote Sensing Systems, a scientific research company located in California, specializing in satellite microwave remote sensing of the Earth.

Both satellite sources showed there has been no warming trend for over 18.5 years. Both showed July and recent months were not even close to being warmest even in just the last 20 years.

Dr. John Christy, Alabama Climatologist and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the UAH said “According to microwave data from satellites going back to 1978, which are precise to within .08 of a degree, very little warming is taking place,”

UAH assessed lower troposphere temperatures have not warmed for over 18 years. The data showed global temperatures for July 2015 were the 9th warmest in the last 20 years.

July 2015 in the RSS data set just edged out 2003 for 8th place, but it was 0.32 C (0.58F) colder than 1998.

So three much more reliable sources suggest that July 2015 was not remarkable or special from a temperature standpoint

That is not to say that given the strong El Nino underway, we won’t see a spike up as we did in the satellite data in 1998 and 2010, but with a long strong La Nina likely to follow (like we saw in 1998-2000 and 2010/11), global temperatures will dive again and the pause is likely to give way to a slide starting in late 2016. How long NOAA or NASA waits before they let you see it in their data is the question.

The problem is that the same staff at NOAA and NASA responsible for running some of the greenhouse models and writing the reports that project the scary scenarios are also responsible for the data bases that validate the forecasts. The actual data should be constructed independently of the forecasts with people who do not have a financial and personal interest in seeing their forecasts verify.

Indeed we see in the independent data sets like the satellite and balloon based ones, widespread model failures. The failure of temperatures to warm invalidates all the other scary scenarios they claim we will or are already experiencing.

There is a lot of flexibility available for modelers to predict a desired result and data source inconsistencies to allow NOAA to be creative with a hybrid of data and models to show whatever the puppet masters in government require. It may be that some really believe in their science and work hard to mine the data, achieving a form of bias confirmation. In other cases it is ideologically or politically driven or simply a matter of job security

A look at all the data suggests that man made global warming is real but the men are in Asheville (NOAA NCDC) and New York City (NASA GISS).

“If we torture the data long enough, it will confess” Ronald Coase, Nobel Economic Sciences, 1991

Apple and Google Pour Billions Down a Green Drain

By Steve Goreham
Originally published in Communities Digital News

Business has been captured by Climatism, the belief that humans are causing dangerous global warming. Leading businesses announce plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, purchase renewable energy, use vehicle biofuels, and buy carbon credits. But there is no evidence that commercial policies to “fight” climate change have any measureable effect on global temperatures.

Apple and Google, the darling companies of the millennial generation, have spent billions trying to halt global warming. Apple has brought us the Mac personal computer, the I-Phone, the I-Pad, and other trend-setting electronic devices, becoming the world’s highest-valued company. Google has been called the most innovative technology company in the world, delivering the Google search engine that revolutionized use of the internet, Google Books, Google Maps, and now developing a self-driving car. But both of these leading companies have swallowed the misguided theory of human-caused climate change, hook, line, and sinker.

Apple’s 2015 Environmental Responsibility Report states, “We don’t want to debate climate change. We want to stop it.” Former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson now heads up Apple’s environmental efforts. The firm boasts that it measures its carbon footprint “rigorously,” estimating it emitted 34 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents in in 2014. But somehow Apple missed the fact that carbon dioxide is a gas emitted in huge volumes by nature. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, nature puts 25 times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day as all of the world’s industries.

Apple is spending more than two billion dollars on renewable energy to power its data centers. In February, the company announced an investment of $848 million for electricity from the California Flats solar farm from electricity provider First Solar. Apple claims it now purchases 100 percent renewable energy for all of its US operations and 87 percent for worldwide operations. But the firm is paying a sizeable premium for solar electricity over the price of traditional energy.

Last year, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said, “Everyone understands that climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and grandchildren and making the world a much worse place.” Google has reportedly committed more than $1.8 billion to renewable energy projects. But these renewable projects typically provide little actual electricity output at very high prices.

An example is the Ivanpah Solar Facility located in the California Mojave Desert, south of Las Vegas. Google invested $168 million in the Ivanpah project developed by Brightsource Energy, which began operations in January 2014. Ivanpah is a concentrating solar facility that has made headlines for its tendency to ignite birds in flight near its towers.

In addition to scorching more than 1,000 birds a year, Ivanpah is a poor electricity-generating station. During 2014, the Ivanpah facility delivered only about half of the electricity it was designed to deliver, which is only about one-tenth of the output of a typical gas-fired power plant. Ivanpah generates electricity at the whopping price of 16 to 17 cents per kilowatt-hour, four times the California wholesale price of 4 cents per kilowatt-hour. Ivanpah owners NRG and Google have asked for a federal grant of $539 million to pay off much of the $1.6 billion federal loan that was used to build the plant. US taxpayers and California electricity users are paying for the Ivanpah boondoggle.

In their rush to fight climate change, Apple, Google, and other engineering companies don’t seem to realize that the theory of global warming fails the first test of maintenance-of-the-line (MOL) product engineering. Many product engineers spend time in MOL engineering early in their career, handling field calls about the company’s product. When a customer calls to report a product failure, the first question an MOL engineer needs to answer is, “Is the product behaving normally, or is it performing abnormally?”

There is no evidence that Earth’s surface temperatures today are abnormally warm when compared to temperatures of history. Temperature proxy data from many sources shows that Earth’s temperatures have actually been declining for the past 8,000 years. Temperatures have been rising for the last century, but Earth experienced warmer times when the Romans conquered the Mediterranean 2,000 years ago and when the Vikings settled southwest Greenland 1,000 years ago.

Ever notice how actual climate results are never part of the claimed benefits of green energy? Measures of success are always carbon emissions reduced, houses powered, kilowatts generated, and carbon credits purchased. No one ever talks about actual reductions in temperature or about droughts, floods, or hurricanes to be averted by using renewable energy. Adoption of green policies is as hollow as building a hospital and never curing a patient or raising an army and never taking a hill.

In fact, changes in Earth’s climate are dominated by natural factors. Earth’s greenhouse effect is dominated by water vapor and natural emissions of carbon dioxide. History shows that hurricanes, floods, droughts, and heat waves are neither more numerous nor extreme than those of the past. There is no empirical evidence that human emissions have a measureable influence on Earth’s climate. All of the green measures by global business will have a negligible effect on global temperatures.

If Apple, Google, and other companies want to invest in renewable energy and fight climate change, they should place green initiatives in their public relations budget. Such programs don’t have any other effect.

Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.

MAN-MADE CLIMATE CHANGE ‘NOT ABOUT SCIENCE’ ADMITS NAOMI KLEIN

Papal Advisor Naomi Klein (pictured) admits in her much-publicized screed that ‘Global Warming’ is all about anti-capitalism – being nothing to do with science.

naomi klein

Klein admits progressive policies on the environment are really about what Marx and Lenin said the communist revolution desired 100 years ago — the overthrow of capitalism. This is not about science, or health, at all. “Our economic model is at war with the Earth,” writes Klein. “We cannot change the laws of nature. But we can change our economy. Climate change is our best chance to demand and build a better world.”

Could the message be any clearer? “This [man-made climate change] is not about science, or health, at all.”

Please note that Klein uses the ambiguous term ”climate change” when she really means “man-made climate change”; it’s a classic case of misleading the public at large that any change in the climate is the fault of human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Here’s further insight into Naomi Klein’s world via Martin Hertzberg’s review of Naomi Klein’s book “This Changes Everything. ” Dr Hertzberg, a respected scientist and author on climate change, writes:

It is tragic that what should have been a debate among objective scientists evaluating the data on weather and climate, has degenerated into a partisan political diatribe. Unfortunately, Klein’s most recent book only adds to the tragedy. In pursuit of her political agenda, facts are distorted and distinguished scientists are denigrated. Here are some examples.

Klein states: “Carbon Dioxide stays in the atmosphere one to two centuries with some of it remaining for a millennium or more”.

Some 50 published papers give at most 5 years for its lifetime in the atmosphere with the best estimate from C-14 decay observed after Russian above ground tests.

Klein states that the “Medieval Warm Period was thoroughly debunked long ago”.

Not true! Hundreds of studies have established the existence of the world wide Medieval Warm period with temperatures exceeding current ones at a time when human CO2 emission was nil. Her discussion of the weather effect of volcanic eruptions neglects to mention the real big ones: Tambora and Krakatoa.

Klein completely discounts the “climategate” scandal.

Not true! Climategate reveals a disgraceful lack of scientific integrity on the part of the climate change advocates. For all the relevant data go to my lecture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPTiTFMhZrg. For factual data rather than her fear mongering cherry picking, go to http://www.climate4you.com and see for yourself. There is nothing unusual happening with temperatures, ice area coverage, sea level rise, or snow cover: just the normal variability in weather related parameters.

To her credit, Klein actually listened to talks by skeptics at a Heartland Conference, but instead of trying to learn from the distinguished scientist’s presentations, she denigrates them.

Thus, for example, she refers to “the denial movement being littered with characters like the old time physicist… S. Fred Singer”.

Instead of noting his achievements as Deputy Secretary of the EPA, his establishment of the Weather Bureau’s Satellite Service and his work in Space Research and Atmospheric Physics and in designing the first Earth Observation Satellite for meteorological observations, she refers to him as a “character” and limits his work to “rocket technology for the U. S. military”.

As an aside, I first met Fred over 50 years ago and indeed he just celebrated his 90th birthday. He left Austria just ahead of the Nazi takeover and really resents being labelled as a “denier” as though he were a holocaust denier. I lost many relatives in the holocaust and also find that denier label to be particularly obnoxious. She also completely fails to mention the series of articles in the Nation by Alexander Cockburn that preceded her work. Cockburn completely discredited the fear-mongering hysteria of the global warmers.

The global warming/climate change theory postulates that human emission of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion is causing an increase in atmospheric CO2 and a concomitant increase in global temperatures and climate disruptions via the greenhouse effect.

Klein accepts that paradigm without question.

But if you read her book carefully you realize that she doesn’t really care much about its validity. To quote: “lowering emissions is just one example of how the climate emergency could – by virtue of its urgency and that the fact that it impacts virtually everyone on earth – breathe new life into a political goal… (such as) raising taxes on the rich, blocking harmful trade deals, to reinvesting in the public sphere….”

“Even more importantly, the climate moment offers an overarching narrative in which everything from the fight for good jobs to justice for immigrants, reparations for the injustice of slavery… all becomes a grand project of building a non-toxic shock-proof economy before it is too late”. So there it is: the science is not that important. What really matters is the social justice we can get from it.

She learned well from her “Shock Doctrine” book. Just as the world’s international bankers took advantage of the debt crises in smaller countries to dismantle their social justice and welfare economies, so does she propose to use the climate change “crisis” to achieve social justice. I agree with most of her social justice goals, but as a scientist, I cannot abide by getting there with a fear-mongering fraud.

So here are the simplest arguments to counter the climate change paradigm. Draconian measures to control CO2 emissions are based on three fictions:

First, that it is a “greenhouse gas”. Neither the EPA nor anyone else has ever provided a scientifically valid definition of such an entity. The atmosphere is not the confining top of a greenhouse, nor can it “retain heat”. Instead it cools the earth by natural convection and radiation to free space.

Secondly, at only 0.04 percent of gases in the atmosphere, CO2 is supposed to control the earth’s temperature and climate. That is an absurdity and there is not one iota of reliable evidence that it does.

Thirdly, the paradigm postulates that human emission determines atmospheric CO2. The data is overwhelming that natural sources and sinks such as ocean emission and absorption, photosynthesis, vegetative decay, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, carbonate rock weathering and many other processes overwhelm human emission. Human emissions are trivial in comparison and they dissolve rapidly into the cold oceans.

The “climate justice” movement, by conflating the justified desire to advance social justice with the phoney theory of man-made climate change, will only serve to discredit social justice as the truth about climate change finally emerges.

Extreme environmental solutions can have unintended consequence (blowback).

The work of Rachel Carson, Klein’s heroine, resulted in the world-wide ban on the use of DDT. The result was about 100,000 more annual fatalities of children in Africa as a result of malaria. That malaria epidemic subsided several years later as soon as DDT use was resumed.

Challenge yourself to realize what harmful unintended consequences would result from the measures to eliminate the use of fossil fuels. The reality is that such a measure will have no effect on weather or climate.

******

Dr Martin Hertzberg is a long time climate writer, a former U.S. Navy meteorologist with a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Stanford University and holder of a Fulbright Professorship. Hertzberg is an internationally recognized expert on combustion, flames, explosions, and fire research with over 100 publications in those areas.

Hertzberg established and supervised the explosion testing laboratory at the U. S. Bureau of Mines facility in Pittsburgh (now NIOSH). Test equipment developed in that laboratory has been widely replicated and incorporated into ASTM standards. Published test results from that laboratory are used for the hazard evaluation of industrial dusts and gases. While with the Federal Government Dr Hertzberg served as a consultant for several Government Agencies (MSHA, DOE, NAS) and professional groups (such as EPRI).

EPA’s gross negligence at Gold King

Fear-mongering, pollution standards and negligence rules don’t apply when EPA is at fault

EPA’s gross negligence at Gold King

Paul Driessen

On August 5, an Environmental Restoration company crew, supervised by US Environmental Protection Agency officials, used an excavator to dig away tons of rock and debris that were blocking the entrance portal of Colorado’s Gold King Mine, which had been largely abandoned since 1923. Water had been seeping into the mine and out of its portal for decades, and the officials knew (or could and should have known) the water was acidic (pH 4.0-4.5), backed up far into the mine, and laced with heavy metals.

But they kept digging – until the greatly weakened dam burst open, unleashing a 3-million-gallon (or more) toxic flood that soon contaminated the Animas and San Juan Rivers, all the way to Lake Powell in Utah. To compound the disaster, EPA then waited an entire day before notifying downstream mayors, health officials, families, farmers, ranchers, fishermen and kayakers that the water they were drinking, using for crops and livestock, or paddling in was contaminated by lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic.

Three million gallons of turmeric-orange poisonous water and sludge is enough to fill a pool the size of a football field (360×160 feet) seven feet deep. Backed up hundreds of feet above the portal into mine adits, stopes, rooms and other passageways that begin at 11,458 feet above sea level, the flash-flooding water had enough power to rip out a road and propel its toxic muck hundreds of miles downstream. (You can review EPA’s incompetence and gross negligence in these project photos* and post-disaster images.)

Anyone who follows mining, oil spill and power plant accidents knows the EPA, Obama White House and Big Green environmentalist rhetoric: There is no safe threshold for chemicals. They are toxic and carcinogenic at parts per billion. The water will be unsafe for years or even decades. Wildlife will die. Corporate polluters are criminals and must pay huge fines. We will keep our boots on their necks.

This time the White House was silent, and Democrats and eco-activists rushed to defend EPA and shift the blame to mining and mining companies. EPA officials made statements they would never use if a private company had caused the blowout: EPA had simply “miscalculated” how much water had backed up. It was just trying to stick a pipe into the top of the mine to safely pump liquid out for treatment. We were “very careful.” Contaminants “are flowing too fast to be an immediate health threat.” The river is already “restoring itself” back to pre-spill levels, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy insisted.

The evidence strongly suggests that EPA never studied or calculated anything, had no operations plan vetted and approved by state officials or mining experts, was not trying to install a pipe – and was grossly careless and negligent. Toxic sludge was carried and deposited along hundreds of miles, contaminating water and riverbeds, where it will be stirred up for years during every heavy rainfall and snowmelt.

Mining engineers told me the prudent approach would have been to push or drill a 4-inch pipe through the rubble into the mine, to determine the water pressure, toxicity and extent of water backup in the mine – and then build a strong cofferdam below the portal – before proceeding. Simply removing the debris was stupid, dangerous and negligent, they said. It will take years now to correct the damage and assess costs.

A week after the great flood, EPA finally built a series of retention ponds to contain and filter out heavy metals and chemicals. But the August 5 surge and sludge are still contaminating Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico rivers, in arid regions where water is scarce and precious. The Navajo Tribal Unity Authority says meeting EPA standards for clean drinking water could double the tribe’s costs for building a new treatment plant and cost millions more in testing and operating expenses.
EPA says it will pay for testing, property damage, human injuries and hauling safe drinking water. But will it pay to truck in safe water for livestock and irrigation, and pay for crops and livestock lost because there is no water in the meantime, and cover millions in lost incomes for outfitters and hotel operators during what would have been their peak tourist seasons? Exxon paid such costs after the Valdez spill in Alaska; BP did likewise after its Macondo spill in the Gulf of Mexico; so have coal companies.

Shouldn’t EPA do likewise, instead of asserting “sovereign immunity” despite its gross negligence? Shouldn’t it cover these costs out of the millions of dollars it uses for employee bonuses and to pay environmental activists and public relations firms to promote its image and agenda – instead of sticking taxpayers with the tab via special appropriations? Will EPA reimburse state and local governments and private charities for assistance they have already rendered? Will it fire the irresponsible officials, or at least demote and discipline them? Will Environmental Restoration pay its fair share?

Under standards that EPA and environmentalists apply to the private sector, Gold King was a disaster. However, the accident could also be an impetus for reflection and responsible regulatory reform.

Anti-mining pressure groups and factions within EPA will use this accident to press for new layers of mining rules, bonds, payments and liabilities. They are unnecessary – and will only restrict the jobs, expertise and revenues needed to ensure that exploration, mining, reclamation and repair of abandoned (orphan) mines are done properly. Modern mining, processing and pollution prevention methods are vastly superior to those employed even 50 years ago, and do not cause the exaggerated impacts alleged by Earthwatch and others. Moreover, the metals and minerals are essential for the wondrous technologies and living standards, the health, housing, transportation and recreational pursuits, that we enjoy today.

The Gold King blowout was predictable and preventable. The mine was leaking slightly polluted water, but the problem was not serious and was being addressed, and the former mining town of Silverton, CO had repeatedly asked EPA not to intervene or make Gold King a Superfund site. Mining engineers and other experts were available, and some had offered their insights and expertise. EPA ignored them.

EPA – and all government agencies – should end their We-know-best and We-know-what-we’re-doing attitudes … and seek outside advice from real experts in the trenches. They should also develop careful operating plans, assess worst-case scenarios, and take steps to ensure that the worst doesn’t happen. Sometimes they just need to do nothing, get out of the way, and let the private sector handle problems.

But they should support Clean Water Act and other revisions to make it easier, less costly and less fraught with potential liability for companies or coalitions of dedicated parties to fix pollution discharge problems at the relatively few abandoned mines that are leaking contaminated water at worrisome levels.

EPA’s new view that these pollutants are not as toxic as previously claimed – and that nature can and does clean things up – is refreshing, even if self-serving. (My use of “toxic” in this article mostly reflects currently prevailing agency, activist and public health industry attitudes and safety standards.)

Standards for maximum contaminant levels and maximum safe exposures are often absurdly low, and the concept of “linear no threshold” (that there is no safe exposure or blood or tissue level for lead, cadmium, arsenic and other metals) is outdated and wrong, Dr. Edward Calabrese and other experts argue.

Pollution, exposure and blood levels are often safe at significantly higher levels than regulations currently allow. Moreover, low levels of exposure to radiation and many chemicals can actually provide protection from cancer, disease and pollutants. While this concept of hormesis is generally ignored by current regulations, we know that a little alcohol improves heart functions, whereas a lot causes multiple problems; an 80 mg aspirin can prevent strokes, but a bottleful can kill; and many vaccinations inject disease strains that cause a person’s immune system to produce antibodies and prevent the disease.

The Obama EPA is already using WOTUS rules on water and a Clean Power Plan on electricity generation and climate change to control virtually everything we make, grow and do. Congressional committees, presidential candidates, businesses and citizens need to get involved, debate these issues, ask tough questions, and work to implement appropriate reforms. Our courts and Congress must not allow another collusive sue-and-settle lawsuit – or a new regime of government controls and mine closures that would drive yet another nail into the coffin of western state and local economies … and cleanup efforts.

Gold King presents a teachable moment. Let’s make sure we learn the correct lessons.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death, and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: Saving the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.

* It appears that EPA deleted its entire photo album, so that people can no longer view them. We are trying to find a citizen archive of the images and will link to it, if possible. Again we have “the most transparent administration in history” (quoting President Obama) at your service.