Dear Harnon:
--Thank you for your post. To my way of thinking, you have sped-read the cited article, and have drawn a rather hasty conclusion, one that is favorable to your point of view. And you seem to have completely avoided addressing my contention, that this is a power grab by the EPA, based on phoney trumped up facts in order to backdoor the Administration's "Cap and Trade" policy. Notice that this is being done without recourse to the legislature, one of the branches of government mentioned in the Constitution.
--Let me summarize the article in brief:
1)Krugman says that the new regulation will, by removing mercury from the atmosphere, save "tens of thousands of lives per year". This would be a minimum of 20,000, right? Krugman quotes an article by David Roberts to support this contention.
2)The David Roberts piece says "tens of thousands of lives" would be saved by the removal of mercury AND TOXICS, not just mercury. But wait, it gets better.
3) If we then trace this mention in the David Roberts piece to its source; an article by Daniel J. Weiss and Jackie Weidman, we get "17,000 premature deaths" avoided do to the removal of "mercury, lead, arsenic and other dangerous pollutants" Now 17,000 "premature deaths" does not equate very well to "tens of thousands of deaths", does it? But wait, it gets even better yet.
4)If we trace even further down to the original EPA factoid we get. "6,800 to 17,000" premature deaths avoided. 6,800 to 17,000, is hardly the same thing as 17,000, and surely it is not "tens of thousands". Next comes the Pièce de résistance.
5)And finally, we find that the EPA is referring to projected lives saved due to a reduction in 2.5 micron particulate matter, not mercury at all. And even this is merely an assumption, with no clinical evidence to back it up.
--And so, we now see, that Krugman is not just exaggerating, he is attempting to foist off an entire boatload, of lies, misstatements, and deceptions to his gullible public. Not Krugman's fault you say; If these were policy statements by the Bush administration, do you think the good Nobel Laureate Doctor would pass them on so blithely?
--So the EPA's extra-legislative power grab is to eliminate traces of mercury in the atmosphere, because mercury is toxic, right? But the non-clinical statistics it bases this on have nothing to with mercury. Remember the greatest source of atmospheric mercury is Forrest fires. Meanwhile the government is mandating that we purchase Chinese made mercury containing florescent bulbs, that when broken release mercury in amounts 6 to 7 orders of magnitude greater, and which should require a HASMAT team to remove.
--If any of this makes sense to you, let me know. Look for you power bill to, as the President says "necessarily skyrocket".
"In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king"
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus
1466 - 1536
Best Regards
Clear Ether