In 1974, Muhammed Ali fought heavily-favored George Foreman in Zaire in "The Rumble in the Jungle". Though Foreman was considered the hardest puncher in heavyweight history, Ali won. How?
Ali covered himself up against the ropes and let Foreman punch until tiring himself out. Ali called this his "rope-a-dope" technique.
Now in 1997, we've all been rope-a-doped by EPA and C. Arden Pope III of Brigham Young University.
The new air pollution standards recently issued by EPA depended upon Pope's 1995 study in which he concluded that particulate air pollution is associated with a 17 percent increase in mortality. EPA used this study to estimate that particulate air pollution killed 15,000 people annually--the linchpin of EPA's proposal.
Like Ali on the ropes against Foreman, when the Pope study was challenged, EPA covered up the study's flaws by refusing to release the data underlying Pope's conclusions.
This strategy succeeded. Without the data, Pope's study was difficult-to-impossible to criticize. Time ran out in the rulemaking process and EPA prevailed.
Although, the data from the Pope study still has not been made available to the public, how badly did EPA and Pope fool us?
A study in the November 8, 1997 issue of The Lancet claimed that unless the world goes along with European goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, 8 million people will die between the years 2000-2020 from particulate air pollution associated with fossil-fuel combustion. The 8-million figure is largely based on the Pope study.
And now Science News, after interviewing Pope, reports that:
[Pope] hopes that people will not place too much weight on [the Lancet study's] estimates of lives that can be saved by climate policies [i.e., estimates based on Pope's study]. Those numbers are still preliminary and rest on substantial uncertainties.
So EPA issued the MOST EXPENSIVE ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION EVER based on a scientific study that is acknowledged by its lead researcher to have "substantial uncertainties?!"
Have we been "Pope-a-doped" or what?
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Copyright © 1997 Steven J. Milloy. All rights reserved. Site developed and hosted by WestLake Solutions, Inc.