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The San Francisco Chronicle today has a big story about an even bigger cock-up from the California Air Resources Board: Apparently, through what reporter Wyatt Buchanan calls "grossly miscalculated" figures on diesel pollution, the CARB may be setting back not just the rule in question -- dealing with reductions in nitrous oxide and particulate matter -- but also raising questions about the Board's competence at a critical time.
Buchanan writes:
The pollution estimate in question was too high -- by 340 percent, according to the California Air Resources Board, the state agency charged with researching and adopting air quality standards. The estimate was a key part in the creation of a regulation adopted by the Air Resources Board in 2007, a rule that forces businesses to cut diesel emissions by replacing or making costly upgrades to heavy-duty, diesel-fueled off-road vehicles used in construction and other industries.
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.
The scale of the miscalculation raises justifiable questions about how CARB came up with its numbers for the diesel pollution. But coming in the wake of another highly publicized miscalculation -- one that in 2009 saw the Board doubling the number of deaths attributable to diesel pollution -- the latest news could spell trouble for climate laws at the state and national level.
Diesel Emisions
This is just the beginning of miscalculations , Everyone often looks at the financial implications of pollution but when new laws are introduced they measured against how much energy is required to implement the new regime.
We have peak oil approaching , at what stage do we keep expending more polluting energy to find and use more energy?
At what stage do we trust governments over figures, surely we want a simple to understand set of laws that are transparent and fair and that are not easily subject to fraud, and tax evasion and backhanders, as everyone at present seem to accept!
Real reform of tax is the precursor to a system that is fair, transparent, less tax fraud , more environmentally accountable, and easy to understand.
A carbon tax to replace all existing taxes ,please.
Diesel Emisions
I sold my construction company 2 years befor implementation of the law so i could at least get some money back on my investment,Im about $40,000 out and i cant sell my 2002 dump truck ,I would have had to put $ 170,000 to by new equipment not in this market.What a loss to the tax system $ 40,000 to 45,000 a year no big deal right ? oh I wonder how meany are like me thank you Air Resorces board