Mercury In Retrograde

November 23, 2011 | Filed under Energy,Environment,Environmentalism | Posted by

On my local radio station, there’s an ad that’s in fairly heavy rotation. It features “Pastor Dawn” of the “Evangelical Environmental Network,” and wants me to thank my Senator (Kelly Ayotte, R-NH) for her “leadership” in preserving the EPA’s ability to regulate mercury levels in the air — in the interests of protecting our children from mercury poisoning.

 

Sounds all nice and warm and fuzzy and noncontroversial, right? Here’s a pastor — a member of the clergy — talking about protecting children. Their web site hits several buzzwords designed to appeal to conservatives — pro-life,” “Christian,” quotes from Scripture, and the like. Scary statistics (one in seven babies born with “harmful” levels of mercury, coal-fired plants being the biggest source of atmospheric mercury) and links to EPA reports to verify them all. Essentially, a pretty good selling job on their target audience — conservative, religious parents.

 

Pity I’m outside their target audience — their emotional appeals don’t mean much to an agnostic single guy with no kids. Instead, they make me suspicious.

 

I don’t have the scientific knowledge and training to challenge their assertions, so I’ll ignore those. What I do know, though, is that the National Center for Public Policy Research (which employs Steven Crowder, and therefore has some credibility in my eyes) has a rather extensive dossier on them that alleges that these people have a pretty rotten history of finding Biblical rationales for some pretty bad causes.

 

But what I do know enough to ask some questions.

 

1) With the United States currently getting 46% of our electricity from coal, and our power plants currently running at near peak capacity to meet demand, what will happen to our electrical supply — and rates — when we start shutting down coal plants?

 

2) What will happen to all the people who will be put out of work with those plants shut down — the workers, the people who mine the coal, the people who transport it, and all the rest?

 

3) What is the EEN’s position on compact fluorescent light bulbs, which contain mercury and will release it into the home should they be broken? At one point, the EPA recommended that should that happen, residents should evacuate and seal the room until they can call in a hazardous-materials team to clean it up. They’ve eased off on that, but one has to wonder if that was done out of political expediency rather than real science.

 

I tend to be suspicious of people and groups that try to push public policy through religion. And I am doubly suspicious when it comes from the left — Reverend Jackson, Reverend Sharpton, and the whole “Liberation Theology” movement have left a seriously bad taste in my mouth.

 

Sorry, “Pastor Dawn.” You collar cuts no weight with me.

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Posted by on November 23, 2011.
Filed under Energy, Environment, Environmentalism.


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  • Anonymous

    All the electricity is going to come from rainbow-colored unicorn farts.  They are carbon and mercury free!

  • http://otisthehand.blogspot.com/ OTIS the hand

    “one in seven babies born with “harmful” levels of mercury…”

    A rather fuzzy statistic I’d say. Probably pulled from Al Gore’s rear end.

    Here’s one that is not so fuzzy. Four in ten babies (from unwanted pregnancies) die before birth from the harmful effects of liberalism.

    “Nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and about four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion.” Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion.”

    [edited for clarity.]

    • jim_m

      The idea of what a “harmful level” of Mercury is is nuts.  When my son was born in 2000, on a lark I calculated the amount of mercury that would be contained in the vaccines he would receive in the first year of his life.  In order for the level to be under he EPA limit for annual exposure he would have to have an average weight of over 40 pounds for the first 12 months.  Obviously there are no such 1 year olds and just as obviously we do not have and have not had an epidemic of mercury toxicity in our children.

      The EPA has set the acceptable levels so low that they are virtually impossible to comply with.  The absurdity is compounded when we look at issues like vaccines and compact fluorescent lights where the levels of Hg would be illegal if we were talking about throwing away a thermometer or burning coal for electricity.

      • http://www.rustedsky.net Anonymous

        Just because you can detect something down to the nanogram/cubic meter range doesn’t mean that (a) the body will notice it’s there, and (b) it’s automatically troublesome.

        Makes you wonder how the human race survived so long without various departments and agencies to tell Cro-ak the caveman not to eat rotten meat and how to deal with the various problems of making his way in the world…

        • Anonymous

          Something else that also makes me wonder is how our parents/grandparents managed to live through one or two World Wars without the intervention of Grief Counselors?

          On a happier note – Happy Thanksgiving, one and all.        UOG

  • jim_m

    You can give up on any expectation of logical consistency from the enviro left.  Environmentalist beliefs are contradictory because they have never bothered to consider the logical extension of those beliefs.  It is not a logical or rational belief system but an emotional one; in my experience far more so than Christianity or any other regular religion.  

  • Anonymous

    Patient of mine in Alaska was gathering air pollution data around the state. He said the main pollutant we have is from the industry in Poland followed by road construction dust. 

    • jim_m

      Dust is not a pollutant!!!!!  How can the ground we walk on, the earth itself, be a pollutant?  That’s like saying that the air we breathe is a pollutant!

      Oh, yeah.  The EPA in its infinite wisdom has declared both air (CO2 necessary for all life on earth to exist) and dust (the very earth itself) to be pollutants.

      Do we need any further evidence that the EPA is run by morons and should top the list of government agencies to be eradicated?

  • http://www.wizbangblog.com David Robertson

    Another wolf dons shepherd’s clothing. The only collar that she should be wearing is a flea collar.

  • Anonymous

    Mercury pollution control is technically possible and available at a small incremental cost http://tinyurl.com/6rhapcv The key to improving the control of actual pollutants (as distinct from carbon dioxide) is to gradually improve the average cleanliness of the fleet by retiring the older, dirtier plants.

    The owners of older, dirty plants do not want to pay extra, particularly in a recession, so they complain. One industry compromise proposal is to extend the date for compliance to 5-6 years from the 3 year term in the proposed regulation. Six years to come into compliance with the average peer performance is not too onerous! There is too much whining by bad actors on both extremes, the EPA and the polluters!