Why Paul Driessen is a Total Environmental Idiot

Here's some of the drivel that Driessen purveyed a day before Halloween, and it's pretty scary that someone actually thinks like this:

Few examples are as immediate, costly and far-reaching as the new ozone, dust, mercury and carbon dioxide rules that EPA regulators are trying to impose, under the guise of protecting air quality, planetary climate and human health. Few corporate executives or citizens are as exempt from basic legal standards as the energy and climate czars, czarinas, bureaucrats, and government-funded scientists and activists who seek to inflict their anti-hydrocarbon agenda on us, regardless of the science – or the impacts on jobs, prosperity, families and civil rights progress.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new mercury, ozone and soot rules alone would eliminate up to 76,000 megawatts of generating capacity by 2015, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation calculates. That’s 7% of total US electric generating capacity – enough to power 38,000,000 homes under normal conditions. It’s 1.2 times the all-time peak electricity demand record for the entire state of Texas.

(skipping down a bit)

EPA claims coal-fired power plants release “40% of all domestic human-caused mercury emissions.” But only a quarter of this is deposited in the contiguous United States. The National Center for Atmospheric Research says total mercury emissions from U.S. power plants are roughly equivalent to what comes from trees burned in forest fires. (Natural mercury in soils is taken up by trees through their roots.)

Some 30% of mercury that lands in the US comes from other countries. And according to data collected by the Science and Public Policy Institute, when emissions from volcanoes, oceanic geothermal vents and other natural sources are also factored in, US power plants may account for as little as 0.5% of total annual US mercury emissions and 0.002% of global emissions.

As for that deposition thing: what goes up must come down, Driessen. A lot of it goes into the oceans. And that gets uptaken by phytoplankton, and then zooplankton, and then little fish, and then big-fish, bioconcentrating its way up the trophic levels. To the point that it is recommended that pregnant women not eat very much fish, and not any of certain kinds of fish:

Consumption of Fish and Seafood During Pregnancy

Doesn't really matter if that mercury from coal-fired plants got deposited in the contiguous United States, does it? Ask Daphne Zuniga or Jeremy Piven if mercury in seafood can be a problem. If you don't think so, don't bother to take your EDTA pills when you go on an all-sushi diet. (You can look at lake sediments and see the reduction in lead due to the banning of lead in gasoline. Still think that was a bad idea? Did this environmental regulation cause you heartache and pain too, Mr. Driessen?)

Here's some source material on anthropogenic and total emissions of mercury:

Global anthropogenic emissions of mercury to the atmosphere

And this from the U.S. Geological Survey on ALL types of mercury emissions to the atmosphere (note that I'm ignoring deep-sea hydrothermal vents, because that is a silly point Driessen makes, because that mercury is totally isolated from the majority of Earth's ecosphere, and usually just precipitates out in a metal-rich mound around the vents):


Sources of mercury


Here's some more "good" stuff on Hg:

Atmospheric Emissions: technical background report

How Mercury Emissions Reach Tuna And Other Seafood, And Why Mercury Contamination Is Likely To Worsen

A New Source of Methylmercury Entering the Pacific Ocean

"[The authors] indicate that total mercury levels in the North Pacific Ocean water have risen about 30 percent over the last 20 years. The authors attribute the rise to increases in global mercury atmospheric emission rates, particularly from Asia.

Big increase in ocean mercury found; study predicts more human threat from fish

And here's a very recent paper:
Global mercury emissions to the atmosphere from anthropogenic and natural sources


The oceans are a major emitter of mercury (but most of that mercury goes right back into the upper ocean, in a surface water cycle). Anthropogenic sources double the emissions to the atmosphere, and this is the extra Hg that gets into the ecosystem.

And here's a great figure from Wikipedia:



"This chart shows the level of atmospheric mercury deposition detected in ice cores from the Upper Fremont Glacier in Wyoming. Heightened deposition rates correspond to volcanic and anthropogenic events over the past 270 years. Preindustrial deposition rates can be conservatively extrapolated to present time (4 ng/L; in green) to illustrate the increase during the past 100 years (in red) and significant decreases in the past 15-20 years.



Now, there's the socio-philosophical point to be made that you either lead or be part of the herd. The United States has led the world in conservation and environmental legislation: no country ever has been as comprehensively strong with national parks, endangered species, and environmental protection (Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Environmental Protection Agency). Driessen advocates economic self-interest that would make us secondary citizens of the world with respect to the environment. Should we as Americans accept that? Or should we not continue to be leaders of this planet, and not shirk our responsibility to the Europeans (which on many issues we already have)? I think that if we can reduce the amount of Hg reaching the oceans by 30%, we should do it. We should set the example. We should be world leaders.

Driessen also splutters:

When Republicans take control of the House of Representatives, their first order of business should be investigating the “manmade climate disaster” industry. They should subpoena federal employees and grant recipients, question them under oath regarding their funding and activities, and hold robust, public, expert debates on the science, economics, costs and supposed benefits of cap-tax-and-trade, carbon dioxide “endangerment,” ozone, and other punitive government policies that are strangling our nation’s energy and economic future.

They need to ensure that basic rules of honesty, transparency and accountability are finally applied as forcefully to regulators and taxpayer-funded scientists and activists, as to the rest of us.

Yes, I think the Republicans should expose how continuing to burn coal, as advocated by Driessen and his ilksters, harms the environment, from mountaintop stripping to bioconcentration of mercury in fish. And that bioconcentration potentially puts the health of unborn children at risk.

And I thought conservative Republicans were worried about that. Silly me.