CARB cries “Wolf!” CA cries “Bullshiite!”

California Air Resources Board is another one of those regulatory agencies set up by elected representatives of The People which then becomes, oddly, unaccountable to either those elected representatives or The People.

It sets forth “regulations” which have the force of law, but which are not actually Laws.  It effects the people and the economy of the state any old way it chooses, without any oversight except the occasional willingness of the Media to investigate.

It is only one of hundreds of Agencies. each with highly paid staff and more highly paid “Boards” churning out regulations like GM churns out Volts.  With about the same degree of usefulness.

There is a legal requirement for “public input” before major regulations are enacted.  And, IF you know the Board exists, and IF you hunt real hard and IF you have the ability to take time off during the day and travel to some distant location [CA is Big, yanno] and IF you have the time and pre-disopsition to research the proposal and resort to public speaking, you will be tolerated, barely heard.  But there is no requirement that any Board respond to what you say.  Only the pressure of media coverage has been known to curb these juggernauts.  Mostly.

In December 2008, CARB enacted a sweeping set of regulations of diesel engines.  It was based on the claim that 3,500 deaths a year occurred from the diesel particulates in the air [PM 2.5].  Not only was the claim itself proven to be bogus, [zer∅ deaths per year*] the person in charge of the CARB “study” was revealed to have purchased his cum laude doctorate online for a measly $1,000.  His name is Hien Tran.  CARB can not fire him, or even re-assign him [say, to filing or mens’ room cleaning] because of CA labor laws and public union regulations.

The regulation required, in effect, that trucks, heavy equipment, light equipment [down to farm tractors used once a year for harvesting] replace their engines with a newly developed “low emissions” engine.  [estimated cost, approx. $400 per horsepower][NB the average 1000-hp dual engine scraper, the kind needed for re-doing levees and flood control dams, would cost $400,000. add to that the increased maintenance costs and “ash disposal” costs]

The State legislature committed $700M* to a program to help operators/owners ”repower” their equipment [buy new engines, then buy upgrades to those “new” engines] which is is a small percentage of the overall cost.  CA Construction Industry estimates a cost of over $9 billion, which would certainly be passed on to the cost of infrastructure re-building [roads, flood control, schools, levees, etc]

What’s that do to bond prices/costs?

Well the CARB morons have been caught again. [see also:  need for free press]

[CARB] grossly miscalculated pollution levels in a scientific analysis used to toughen the state’s clean-air standards ...by 340 percent.

...The staff of the powerful [oh yeah] and widely respected [is that a bend-of-the-knee I see?] Air Resources Board said the overestimate is largely due to the board calculating emissions before the economy slumped…

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.

Imagine the result in private industry if one’s research turned out to be “miscalculated” by 340%?

Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, ...was recently asked why the air board estimate of a nitrous oxide source was off by at least a factor of two - air board scientists have since revised their numbers, and data show the estimate was off by 340 percent. Nichols’ response: “I can’t answer that for you.”

Oh.  Well....  Don’t worry about it, then.

Incidentally, Mary took home $56,857.50 in 2007, 142,992.00 in 2008, and 129,208.40 in 2009.  Check their salaries here.

Nichols was emphatic, though, when asked whether she has concerns about other scientific calculations made by air board scientists.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no and no,” she said.

C’mon California—Let’s say “No, no, no, no, no, no, no and no,” to this Bullshiite Board—and all the others.  Hell - we could give food stamps to every single person in Modesto [unemployment rate 40%] for just their paperclip budget.