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Oct 9, 2010

ARB Grossly Miscalculated Pollution Levels

The San Francisco Chronicle published an article on the California Air Resources Board overestimating pollution by 340 percent.  The overestimated figure was a vital part of 2007 regulation that FORCES businesses to cut diesel emissions.

The staff of the powerful and widely respected Air Resources Board said the overestimate is largely due to the board calculating emissions before the economy slumped, which halted the use of many of the 150,000 diesel-exhaust-spewing vehicles in California. Independent researchers, however, found huge overestimates in the air board's work on diesel emissions and attributed the flawed work to a faulty method of calculation - not the economic downturn.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/07/BAOF1FDMRV.DTL#ixzz11sg3aecJ
The chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, Mary Nichols had this to say when questioned if any other ARB calculations could be incorrect.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no and no," she said.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/07/BAOF1FDMRV.DTL#ixzz11sga0gat
Mary Nichols  has known of some of the problems with the data, and rather than disclosing it to board members, chose to not share it with her fellow board members.  ARB can do whatever they like with falsified information to hurt business within California for the boards own political gains.

One of the major recent problems was an air board estimate of premature deaths caused by particulate matter spewing from diesel engines. The first calculation found 18,000 deaths a year in the state had links to particulate matter. That has been revised down by nearly half.
The revision was ordered after the board scientist who oversaw that study was outed as having faked his scientific credentials.
Roberts and other board members were not told by Nichols that the scientist, Hien Tran, lied about earning a doctorate from UC Davis before they voted in favor of regulations based in part on his science. That vote took place in December 2008.
Nichols, who acknowledges she knew about the falsification prior to the vote, has apologized for not sharing that information with her fellow board members.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/07/BAOF1FDMRV.DTL&ao=2#ixzz11sgtE9lG

ARB – are they wanna be do gooders, or just harming business?  California should just get rid of the ARB and adopt a single EPA federal emissions requirement.   The EPA is the federal agency in charge of emissions and air pollution. The ARB making their own requirements puts an undo burden on business, something this economy can not support in the current climate.
This latest error is just the tip of the iceberg of a comedy of errors on the part of the ARB. They are not here to protect people, rather they do a great job of hurting business and jobs in California by imposing unrealistic expectations based on falsified “scientific” information. 
Lets get rid of the ARB.

http://killcarb.org/index.html

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

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