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The EPA airbrushed away 6 million cars to make your gas mileage worse

by IngeborgTeague Posted on December 7, 2018

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When President Donald Trump’s administration argued last August that they were going to save 1,000 lives a year by axing gas mileage rules, you pretty much knew it was BS. Now the same expert the administration relied on to make the claim has helped dismantle the argument in hilarious detail.

Let’s be honest here: Everything below will only confirm your initial impression that the administration’s arguments were hollow. Still, it’s satisfying to see what happened when experts took the time to scrutinize them.

The lead author of this critique — just published in Science — is the economist the EPA cited most frequently in making the case for rolling back the fuel standards, Antonio Bento, a professor at the University of Southern California. Bento and ten other researchers found that the administration’s justification “has fundamental flaws and inconsistencies,” and “is misleading.” For instance, they found that the EPA simply wished away 6 million cars, which made the regulatory rollback look at least $90 billion cheaper for Americans.

To grasp how nutty this is, you have to understand that the Trump administration’s basic argument was that fuel economy standards raise the price of new cars. So instead of buying new ones, people keep driving their old cars longer. That risks lives, they claimed, because new cars have better safety features. But if we scrapped fuel standards, people would be more likely to buy new cars, and therefore less likely to die.

To make the numbers support this line of argument, the EPA had to say that rolling back the standards would lead to 6 million fewer cars on the road by 2029. But the idea that making cars cheaper will lead to fewer cars on the road is, as the experts put it, “simply inconsistent with basic economic theory.”

(If you want to get into the weeds, there are more eyerollers in the full study.)

As it happens, Politico reported this week that EPA staffers disputed the agency’s analysis and that the agency will revise its estimates.

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The EPA airbrushed away 6 million cars to make your gas mileage worse

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EPA stops pretending to ‘update’ the climate change page it deleted

by CharlenLowman Posted on November 3, 2018

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It’s no secret that the Trump administration has been deleting climate change from government websites. Perhaps the saddest part of it all has been the fate of the EPA’s climate page, which used to provide information on the health and environmental impacts of human-induced climate change.

Shortly after President Trump took office in January 2017, a spokesperson for the EPA transition team told The Hill that there were no plans to take down content regarding climate change. “We’re looking at scrubbing it up a bit, putting a little freshener on it, and getting it back up to the public,” he said.

Nearly two years later, that “little freshener” has turned into an overhaul.

In April 2017, the EPA’s climate change page was taken down for revisions to “reflect the agency’s new direction under President Donald Trump.”

After a year and a half of waiting, it’s now clear that there is no update coming. The page has dropped the pretense of revisions, an analysis by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative shows. The site dropped the line “This page is being updated” in October and replaced it with “We want to help you find what you are looking for.”

Thankfully, it still links to a snapshot of the page from when President Obama was in office. If what you’re looking for is up-to-date climate change data from 2018, however, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

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EPA stops pretending to ‘update’ the climate change page it deleted

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In the Beginning . . . – Isaac Asimov

by Myrna Posted on April 20, 2018

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In the Beginning . . .

Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis

Isaac Asimov

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: June 10, 2014

Publisher: Open Road Media

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis . The beginning of time. The origin of life. In our Western civilization, there are two influential accounts of beginnings. One is the biblical account, compiled more than two thousand years ago by Judean writers who based much of their thinking on the Babylonian astronomical lore of the day. The other is the account of modern science, which, in the last century, has slowly built up a coherent picture of how it all began. Both represent the best thinking of their times, and in this line-by-line annotation of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, Isaac Asimov carefully and evenhandedly compares the two accounts, pointing out where they are similar and where they are different. “There is no version of primeval history, preceding the discoveries of modern science, that is as rational and as inspiriting as that of the Book of Genesis,” Asimov says. However, human knowledge does increase, and if the biblical writers “had written those early chapters of Genesis knowing what we know today, we can be certain that they would have written it completely differently.” Isaac Asimov brings to this fascinating subject his wide-ranging knowledge of science and history—and his award-winning ability to explain the complex with accuracy, clarity, and wit. Isaac Asimov was a Russian-born American writer and the author of nearly five hundred books. He is credited as one of the finest writers of science fiction in the twentieth century. Many, however, believe Asimov’s greatest talent was for, as he called it, “translating” science, making it understandable and interesting for the average reader.

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In the Beginning . . . – Isaac Asimov

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Trump actually wants to enforce an environmental rule. A court says he can’t.

by HeribertoKomine Posted on August 9, 2017

The city of freeways is building light rail, and passengers are hopping on board.

We’ve seen a general decline in transit riders around the country as the economy has improved, gas prices have fallen, and public transport systems have aged. But Los Angeles is bucking that trend.

Take the Expo line, which opened in May 2016 and runs from downtown L.A. to the beach. It carried an average of 64,000 riders each weekday in June 2017 — an increase of almost 20,000 riders from a year earlier. Officials had predicted the line wouldn’t get that popular until 2030.

Nearly 70 percent of Expo line riders reported that they hadn’t used mass transit regularly before the line opened, and more than half of those new riders had switched from cars, according to the Washington Post.

That’s just one light-rail route. Here’s a peek at the L.A.’s plans to expand its lines by 2040:

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For years, Angelenos thought that only the efforts of a hostile dictator would allow them to travel freely across their city. Now, they’ve found another way.

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Trump actually wants to enforce an environmental rule. A court says he can’t.

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Are US Airlines Worse Than European Airlines? This Chart Won’t Tell You.

by TerrieMahler Posted on April 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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A couple of days ago I wrote that we, the traveling public, have conclusively demonstrated that we care about nothing but price. This is one reason air travel has become progressively more awful. Steve Randy Waldman is sick and tired of people like me saying things like this:

There are two things wrong with this line that air travel is awful because consumers’ true revealed preference is that it should be awful and cheap. First, there is the fact that air travel managed by the main domestic carriers in the United States is uniquely awful, and there is no evidence that US travelers are any more price conscious than consumers in other countries. No frills, discount air travel is popular in Europe as well, and it is sometimes awful, but it is on the whole much cheaper than “discount” air travel within the US. Mainstream carriers almost everywhere else in the developed world are notably less awful than the big American carriers, and often just as cheap.

When I was writing my post, this was actually at the top of my mind. Is American air travel really uniquely awful? The problem is not just that I couldn’t think of any data to bring to bear on this question, I couldn’t even think of any anecdotal data that would be meaningful. It’s true that I hear griping about American carriers a lot more than I do about European carriers, but then, living in California I would, wouldn’t I? Complaint rates might be germane, but should that be per flight or per 100,000 miles or what? And are fares really the same or lower than in the US? That’s hard to say, since Europe is simply a different environment: different regulators, shorter distances, more concentrated population centers, real competition from trains, etc. Nor do I know how subsidies play out among various countries.

The bottom line is that this would take some very careful research indeed. However, if you absolutely insist, I just spent the past few minutes doing some un-careful research. All I can say about it is that I promise I didn’t cherry pick. For the US, I chose the four biggest airlines. For Europe, I chose four representative big airlines, and I chose them before I looked at the data:

US data is for March 2017 here. European airline data is for Q1 2016 from Britain’s CAA here. For Europe, this is not continent-wide data. It’s only for complaints filed in the UK.1

I have absolutely no idea if these numbers are really comparable. Do Americans simply complain less than Brits? (Seems unlikely.) Is it easier to complain in Britain? Are “enplanements” (US) the same as “passengers” (Europe)? Or do European airlines really suck way worse than US airlines?

I don’t know, and you shouldn’t assume this chart tells you. Still, it definitely doesn’t suggest that US airlines are uniquely awful. The bottom line is that we need real research to come to any conclusions here. If I’m bored this weekend, maybe I’ll look for some.2

1One thing you can’t do is use US data to compare domestic and international carriers. The international carriers are flying exclusively international flights into the US, and the rules and flying experiences are very different for domestic and international flights. One way or another, you have to use local data so that you get a roughly comparable split of domestic and international flights for all carriers.

2But probably not. I’ve got other work to do.

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Are US Airlines Worse Than European Airlines? This Chart Won’t Tell You.

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Obama’s Overtime Rule Is Perfectly Sensible and Deserves Judicial Deference

by HilarioConnibere Posted on November 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Prepare to be fascinated. Last week I noted that a Texas judge had blocked the Obama administration’s new overtime rules. The basic issue here is simple: the law states that you’re exempt from overtime rules if you’re a “bona fide” executive, administrative, or professional (EAP) employee. But what does that mean? That’s up to the Department of Labor, which has always had a two-part test. First, you have to have the actual duties of an EAP employee. Second, there’s a salary floor: you have to make more than a certain amount. This is basically designed to keep employers from pretending that someone is an EAP even though they’re paying them peanuts.

The previous floor, set in 2004, was $23,660, or about $29,000 in 2014 dollars. The new rule raised that to about $47,000. The judge ruled that was too high. At $23,660, it made sense that no one under that level could possibly be a bona fide EAP. But at $47,000? Maybe they could.

Was the judge right? Jared Bernstein, who’s been deeply involved in this issue, writes today that he’s not. The basic problem is that the judge accepted the Bush administration’s number as gospel without considering the entire history of the salary floor. Adjusted for inflation, here’s what it looks like since 1940:1

The new level of $47,000 looks perfectly reasonable in historical context. In fact, it’s the 2004 number that looks way out of whack. But what if you use PCE instead of CPI as your inflation measure?

Now it’s the $47,000 number that looks like an outlier. Maybe the judge was right?

I don’t think so. As a matter of bloggy interest, we can certainly argue whether CPI or PCE (or some other measure) is “best” for measuring long-term inflation. However, they’re both widely used and perfectly acceptable in a broad sense. If the Department of Labor uses CPI, that’s a reasonable choice, which the court should give deference to under the Chevron rule. Beyond that, if DOL chooses to look at the historical record for the salary floor, rather than solely at the Bush administration’s number, that’s also reasonable and deserves deference.

Bottom line: the Labor Department set the salary floor in a reasonable way, backed by plenty of empirical evidence. (More empirical evidence than just the historical level of the salary test, I should add.) If anyone was out of line here, it was the Bush administration, not the Obama administration.

1The actual raw numbers are a little tricky to figure out. From 1950 through 1975, DOL used two different salary floors related to a “long test” and a “short test.” (Don’t ask.) As near as I can tell, the best fit to the previous floors is an average of the two, so that’s what I used. Bernstein has more on this here.

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Obama’s Overtime Rule Is Perfectly Sensible and Deserves Judicial Deference

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First Officer Killed in Dallas Police Ambush Identified as Brent Thompson

by DamianSpivakovs Posted on July 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Dallas police have identified the first of the five police officers who were killed Thursday night, after gunmen opened fire near an anti-violence protest in Dallas, an event that marks the deadliest attack on American law enforcement since September 11th.

According to James Spiller, chief of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit, 43-year-old Brent Thompson was identified as one of the five police officers killed in the ambush. Thompson had gotten married to a fellow officer in the last two weeks, and was the first officer from the transit police ever killed in the line of duty.

“Brent was a great officer,” Spiller said. “We will definitely miss him. But we are also making sure that his family is taken care of.”

Six other officers were wounded in the attack. Read DART’s statement on Thompson’s death here.

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First Officer Killed in Dallas Police Ambush Identified as Brent Thompson

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Arnold Schwarzenegger is here to terminate your hamburger addiction

by MelissaHope Posted on June 28, 2016

Conan the Vegetarian

Arnold Schwarzenegger is here to terminate your hamburger addiction

By on Jun 28, 2016Share

A sweaty Arnold Schwarzenegger wanders across a barren wasteland before turning to the camera and jawing out the line, “Less meat, less heat… more life.”

This is a scene in the latest James Cameron flick, a public service announcement for the advocacy group WildAid and the Chinese Nutrition Society, aimed at linking meat eating to climate change. It’s meant to sway people to follow the country’s new dietary guidelines and eat less meat. So far there’s just a “behind the scenes” teaser, and it’s predictably over the top. Animal agriculture isn’t as big a producer of greenhouse gases as Cameron claims. He says it’s the second biggest, but you have to include all farming (plants plus animals) and forest clearance to make ag the second biggest emitter.

Cameron and Schwarzenegger are basically claiming that meat will destroy the world. It would be more accurate to say that, while meat-eating is carbon intensive, animal agriculture is also a key step in making a better world for many poor farmers and underfed kids. But who goes to a Cameron or Schwarzenegger film for nuance? If the flexing Governator can help convince affluent Chinese and rich people around the world that they don’t need meat to be strong, so much the better.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger is here to terminate your hamburger addiction

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Charles Koch finds a lot of things scary — except climate change

by DerickJWCV Posted on May 2, 2016

Politics

Charles Koch finds a lot of things scary — except climate change

By on May 2, 2016Share

Charles Koch finds plenty of things scary. He’s alarmed by “rampant cronyism” in government (a phrase he’s used to veil his jabs at renewable energy) and by what President Obama’s reelection did to the American Dream. He is afraid for what the 2016 election holds in store and believes collectivist thinking will doom us. What the Koch Industries CEO doesn’t find alarming, however, is that humans are causing the planet to burn up.

In a recent interview with ABC News’ Powerhouse Politics podcast, Koch diminishes the impacts of our warming planet. He muses about our fate in a segment flagged by the liberal super PAC American Bridge:

Is the climate changing due to CO2 in a way that’s going to be catastrophic and unmanageable? Or is it changing in a mild and manageable way? I believe the evidence is overwhelming that it’s changing in a mild and manageable way.

These policies that are being introduced in the United States, as a matter of fact, under their own models would have virtually zero impact on the future temperature or other aspects of the climate. And in fact I think they make matters worse, because they get people going after the subsidies rather than innovating.

If this line of thinking sounds familiar, it’s because climate-denying politicians and others in the Koch-funded universe have all used similar talking points. It’s more clever than outright denying that carbon pollution is warming the planet – a fact Koch admits is true.

But Koch adds a key qualifier: Human activity, he says, has “contributed to much less than what [scientific] models projecting catastrophe show.” It’s foolish, he continues, to push policies that “are making people’s lives worse. They’re raising the cost of energy for no benefit and guess who suffers the most – the poorest people used three times the energy as a percentage of income than the average American.”

Never mind that utilities, corporations, and households are increasingly turning toward renewables in order to shave energy costs — alternative energy meets Koch’s criteria of “making people’s lives worse.”

It’s a modification of Koch’s past arguments on climate change, which have ranged from doubting scientific consensus to suggesting the warming will be good for us. With awareness of climate change back on the rise in the United States, it only makes sense that Koch is trying out another message.

The talking points might shuffle, but they serve the same purpose: delay. And like many arguments that came before it, this one is full of problems. Koch ignores that the poor in the United States and around the world are on the front lines of climate change, and are likely to be hardest hit by even the slightest changes in global averages. Indeed, they have already started to feel some dramatic consequences at an average 1-degree warming. Left unchecked, the planet is in for well over 4-degree C warming by the end of the century.

From his corporate headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, the 80-year-old billionaire has little reason to be fearful of climate change.

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The 2016 Presidential Primary Delegate Tracker

by DominickMadgwick Posted on March 6, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Click on any state below to get up-to-date information about who won the Republican and Democratic races and how many delegates they nabbed. For the states that haven’t yet voted, you can find the date of the election and how many delegates are up for grabs.

In tonight’s race, voters in five states went to the polls for both parties, with 155 delegates on the line for the Republicans and 109 for the Democrats.

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The 2016 Presidential Primary Delegate Tracker

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