Oil rigs in the sunset. (Photo: Thaiview/Shutterstock)
Why is California’s Air Board Using Chinese Research to Ban Diesel Trucks?
CARB used two Chinese studies on Air Pollution and Mortality in the Medicare Population
By Katy Grimes, April 29, 2023 1:06 pm
“The California Air Resources Board (CARB) announced on Friday that the sale of all new diesel big rig trucks and buses will be banned in the state starting in 2036, coming in a year after a similar new gas-powered car bar was previously voted on,” the Globe reported Friday.
“In addition to the 2036 sales ban on new diesel trucks and buses, CARB, also announced that all trucks in California are to be zero-emissions by 2042. Under these new regulations, also known as the Advanced Clean Fleets rule, CARB hopes to achieve a total zero-emissions truck and bus fleet by 2045, as well as have at least 1.6 million zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty trucks operating in the state by 2048.”
Why is California’s Air Board using flawed PM2.5 deaths research, much of which has been conducted by Chinese investigators, to ban diesel trucks in the state? California has record low pollution levels. And CARB admits trucks represent only 6% of the vehicles on California’s roads. Other than further destroying the trucking industry and the businesses of independent owner/operators, what is the purpose of this new law?
The science behind these regulations is not only dubious, it is from China, which has a strong motive to see that the United States succumbs to the climate change movement, much of which is funded by China, as Real Clear Energy reported: “For China, climate change offers a strategic opportunity. Decarbonizing the rest of the world makes China’s economy stronger – it weakens its rivals’ economies, reduces the cost of energy for its hydrocarbon-hungry economy, and sinks energy-poor India as a potential Indo-Pacific rival.”
The US economy is being deliberately held back as China builds 2 new coal power plants per week = 8 new coal plants a month = nearly 100 new coal power plants a year, according to a report by energy data organizations Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. China quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021, NPR recently reported.
Dr. James Enstrom contacted the CARB Board and Research Screening Committee Members about their latest pending decision:
I am a highly accomplished California epidemiologist who has had a 50-year career at UCLA and the Scientific Integrity Institute in Los Angeles. I have published overwhelming epidemiologic evidence that there is NO relationship between PM2.5 and mortality or life expectancy in California. In addition, there is very strong evidence that the current average personal exposure to air pollution in California is below the level of known adverse health effects.
PM2.5 refers to atmospheric particulate matter (PM) that have a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers, which is about 3 percent the diameter of a human hair and can only be detected with an electron microscope. Back to Dr. Enstrom’s letter to CARB:
Thus, the CARB Research Screening Committee (RSC) must reject both the Su Proposal on “Impacts of Air Pollution on Life Expectancy” and the Zhang Proposal on “Characterization of PM2.5 in the San Joaquin Valley”.
The RSC must examine the evidence in my disqualified January 23 Proposal that there has been NO relationship between PM2.5 and mortality or life expectancy in California from 1960 to 2020 (http://scientificintegrityinstitute.org/CARBProp012323.pdf). My proposal has ZERO cost and includes extensive epidemiologic, statistical, and toxicological expertise, as I explained to the RSC on January 26 -(http://scientificintegrityinstitute.org/JEECRSC012623.pdf). All of the null evidence in my proposal has been deliberately ignored by Su and his collaborators Jerrett, McConnell, Burnett, Zhu, Ritz, Ghosh, and others. Detailed research misconduct complaints have previously been filed against Jerrett (http://scientificintegrityinstitute.org/Jerrett040623.pdf) and McConnell (http://scientificintegrityinstitute.org/McConnell040623.pdf).
By evaluating only the Su and Zhang proposals, the RSC is participating in a pre-determined CARB process to improperly award sole-source contracts that deliberately exaggerate PM2.5 health effects in California. In addition, there are many technical problems with these proposals. For instance, Su’s proposed use of Medi-Cal records for air pollution epidemiology is totally inappropriate and violates HIPAA confidentiality requirements. I will strongly oppose approval of the Su proposal by the Human Subjects Review Committees of UC Berkeley and the California Department of Health and Human Services.
In conclusion, these Chinese investigators should be focused on the very high pollution levels in China, not on the record low pollution levels in California. RSC approval of their proposals will be immediately appealed.
Thank you very much for your consideration of my comment.
Sincerely yours, James E. Enstrom, PhD, MPH, FFACE
Retired UCLA Research Professor (Epidemiology)
http://scientificintegrityinstitute.org/biography.html
https://co2coalition.org/teammember/james-enstrom/
Enstrom told the Globe, “This crazy, destructive regulation that has nothing to do with public health. The current personal exposure to AP in CA is below level of proven health effects.”
To no avail. The CARB Board has an obvious mandate. They admit it:
The new rule helps put California on a path toward accomplishing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s goal of fully transitioning the trucks that travel across the state to zero-emissions technology by 2045.
And the Governor and Legislature allow them to illegally make law based on fraudulent, doctored science from China, a foreign country which says it will “own America” inside the next 15 years.
So is someone at the CARB on China’s payroll? For that matter, who in state government is helping China along with their nefarious goal? How is this information easy for us to find, but the CARB either can’t or won’t.
Remember, this is the same California Air Resources Board which has a rich history of fraudulent diesel emission studies, violations of California’s open meeting act, and even experimented on children with dangerous diesel exhaust. The CARB also launders cap and trade funds extorted from California businesses by way of carbon offset auctions, through Western Climate Initiative, Inc., “WCI Inc.,” a Delaware Corporation formed by the California Air Resources Board under Mary Nichols, CARB Chairwoman.
Additionally, the Globe reported in 2019:
California Globe can report that a number of USC professors in the Department of Preventive Medicine have received at least $268 million in air pollution research funding from the Environmental Protection Agency and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, according to Dr. James Enstrom, who believes that this massive amount of research funding has influenced their research findings and their continuing support for the South Coast Air Quality Management District regulations.
Enstrom says his belief is reinforced by USC Preventive Medicine Professors Duncan C. Thomas and Kiros T. Berhane who have failed to respond to Enstrom’s January 2019 and June 2018 emails, which summarize the latest epidemiologic evidence that PM2.5 does not cause premature deaths and that there is no justification for new SCAQMD regulations.
The Globe also reported:
Tasked with overseeing climate change policy and improving California’s air quality, the California Air Resources Board operates like no other state agency. The rogue agency conducts its business in private, without the scrutiny of the public it is accountable to, despite legislative and public outrage over the shroud of secrecy.
In 2012, the CARB, with help from the Democratic Assembly Speaker, figured out a way to exempt itself from the state’s open meeting act. Government Code 11120, the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, is explicitly exempted in the language of a 2012 budget trailer bill authored by then-Assembly Speaker John Perez, a Democrat from Los Angeles.
The California Air Resources Board has not played by their own rules for a long time, and even moved the goal line. The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, also known as AB 32, charged the California Air Resources Board with the responsibility of reducing California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This represents a 25 percent reduction statewide. However, the CARB took it one step beyond, and instead adopted the United Nation’s goal: “To avert catastrophic warming,” the world’s scientists have concluded we must reduce GHGs to 80 – 90% below 1990 levels by 2050.”
Many believe the motive is entirely economic by the “world’s scientists,” who want to maintain existing funding, as well as keep future funding flowing in. In order to do this, they must go along with the EPA’s and CARB’s goals.
The EPA and the CARB board insist their goals are the protection of the most vulnerable in society. It’s difficult to believe the EPA and the CARB are sincere when the EPA conducted diesel exhaust experiments on children at UCLA and USC, I wrote in 2015. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency paid the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles to conduct experiments on children, to determine whether exposure to diesel exhaust harms humans.
These experiments were illegal under the Nuremberg Code, California state law, and federal regulations, concerning the protection of human subjects in medical research, according to Energy and Environmental Legal Institute attorney David Schnare.
According to the EPA and CARB, smog causes everything from cardiovascular disease, to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. The big question is how can the UCLA and USC professors be so adamant on the lethality of particulate matter, and then conduct experiments of these particulates on children?
CARB has some explaining to do, and California lawmakers should be first in line with a long list of questions, after having abdicated their exclusive lawmaking authority to CARB.
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The only thing that is for sure is that hobbling the American economy is sure to increase the number of vulnerable in the country, by a lot.
Why? Because they are well paid ¥ to do so.
Well, THAT’S interesting, isn’t it? On more than one level, too.
So let’s start hearing some explanations, CARB, and they’d better be good, although it’s very hard to imagine how they could ever pass muster. With anyone.
Thanks for this exhaustively and flawlessly-sourced article, Katy Grimes, and at a critical time when CARB & Co. are tripling down on full California Destructo-Mode for “rewards” about which they have been anything but transparent. This article is rich with information — one-stop-shopping, you might say — for those who want to learn and be reminded of CARB’s numerous crimes over the years. Crimes that have thus far gone unpunished. Californians have been suffering and losing, economically and otherwise, in the strangling grip of this powerful but un-elected group of morally and ethically challenged bureaucrats who have long ruled and operated with only their own beyond-sketchy interests in mind. It’s way past time for CARB to be disbanded and dumped.
Many thanks also to the stalwart and talented Dr. James Enstrom for all of his work. Grateful.
Newsom and the Democrat controlled legislature allowed the unelected minions on the California Air Resources Board to illegally make law based on fraudulent, doctored science from China? Would anyone be surprised if they weren’t all getting payoffs from the CCP? Thankfully we have Katy Grimes and California Globe to uncover the corruption that permeates California’s government!
CARB has gone from hiring a fake PhD to falsify “research” to paying the Red Chinese to produce a “study” with a predetermined outcome?
From academic fraud to Treason in their quest to destroy the county.
Once again government bureaucrats sell out the very people they claim they want to protect and save. Verifiable science is ignored and manipulated to serve an agenda. An agenda that enriches the elites and the CCP.
This is eerily similar to the SARS COVID 2 response, China led the way on lock downs, masking, testing….
Same playbook.
Katy Grimes asks and answers why CARB used CCP data.
The Chinese are in a thousand year war with us. Most of us have not a clue as we sip our lattes, drive our Teslas
(which China is heavily invested) and watch Tic Tock stars . China encourages the use of electric cars that use cobalt and lithium because they mainly control the extraction and sale of it.
They increase coal plants because they know it is the most efficient to generate electricity.
The pollution China generates travels in the atmosphere to California and beyond. We are to believe our state bans will magically clean the air and negate the effects of the other polluters such as China? Just like the San Francisco travel bans , this policy will hurt us, not benefit us.
CARB members play right into the hands of the CCP. We will become more dependent on the China for batteries that really are destructive to the environment. They will grow stronger while we grow weaker.
Unknowing California residents buy into the do good narrative of saving the most vulnerable,. After all who wouldn’t want to breathe fresh air and drink clean water.
Where will the massive truck batteries be disposed after their short unproductive life? What will a an accident look like when a truck electric battery catches fire as exampled with Tesla accidents.
CARB should be investigated and disbanded. We know that is unlikely because we do not have dissent or dialogue in our legislature. Instead we are surrounded by oligarchs that convince the masses they know best even if they use faulty data to coerce others to buy their B.S.
Meanwhile China is convincing other nations to dump the petro-dollar and buy in yuan. BRICS is being formed while the U.S pours more federal tax dollars into a war that cannot be won in the Ukraine.
This article needs to go national, thinking Tucker, Schweizer, Don Jr. or maybe the Orange County Register.
Orange county needs a good offense against Newsom and his homeless business complex.
Perhaps put this in a video format for all of those that do not read the printed word.
This is NOT a conspiracy!
Thank you Katy, keep digging.
The Epoch Times and Zerohedge.com would be interested in accelerating this great investigative reporting, along with The Gateway Pundit.
Correction: This is not a conspiracy THEORY.
These are facts.
This type of subterfuge is going on throughout many, many government agencies with “appointed” bureaucrats!
These types of facts need broadcasted far and wide or our Republic will fall!
These are the people who say you must submit to the “science” no matter how insane it sounds. Now we see it in action.
In the UK they are making rules that say you basically cannot do anything at all. No flying and no new construction. You will be locked down in 15 minute cities and you will be fed insects while the elites party around the clock . Yes really.
I say no to Hell!
Tomorrow, I agree the UNELECTED bureaucrats craft and guide policy.
I would love to see these commissions and boards such as CARB grilled by hard hitting journalists in a public forum. The likes of Katy Grimes, Sheryl Attickson, Emerald Robinson, Lara Logan could massage the truth out of these people and expose the true intent.
No conspiracies.
No one is immune, it happens at all levels of government, the city councils are directed by city staff on special projects and councils rubber stamp them. We the public have no one to hold accountable when half baked projects go awry, i.e. homeless navigation centers.
As the Dr. James Enstrom pointed out, policy is now driven money, in the form of government grants. If states, counties and cities want funding for something as simple as road paving, they must now abide by some hefty climate change goals/ net zero, to obtain the grant money. A simple repaving project turns into a road diet, narrowing roads, special paint markings, eliminating lanes and yes lunatic traffic calming measures that in the end do not reduce traffic accidents or deaths.
Why?
Because Newsom is sold out to the CCP, that’s why…
Remember the sweetheart PPE deal to BYD (“Build Your Dreams”) the CCP conglomerate that apparently deals in PPE AND (surprise) train equipment that Newsom’s (and Brown’s) choo-choo to nowhere is under contract to use…
Start at the top, Biden is sold out to the CCP via Hunter and Newsom is as well…
Feinstein had a CCP spy for a driver and Swalwell had a CCP spy for a mattress cover…
The CA water policy is designed to bankrupt CA farmers so CCP business interests can buy up the farmland at the bankruptcy sale, and this is damning evidence that the CARB is engaging in treasonous activities via these and the recent train emission regulations…
“It’s Chinatown, Jake”
Prove these hypotheses wrong…
Just had a look at the Jason G. Su CARB study proposal.
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2023-04/UCB%20Su%20Scope%20of%20Work%20041923.pdf
The guys looks remarkably like a perma grad student. Who spends decades publishing pointless “research”. Not seeing much of actual academic career. Looks like a scientific non-entity.
Even with a cursory glance at the proposal doc there are whole bunch of very basic problem with data sets used. Its got such fundamental mathematical and methodological flaws its worthless.
First the study population is the undifferentiated MediCal population starting in 1990. Thats all. Even though the proposal shows that there must have been a major demographic and age cohort change in the population in those years, for 10% of state population to 25%, no account seems to have been taken of that fact in the very simplistic mathematical models Su used. Or that its a very non representational sample of the whole state population. Hardly surprising that Su would be unaware of very basic facts like this about California demographics as he only moved to the US in 2010. After a six years in Canada.
The other huge red flag in the research is the PM2.5 data used. Its by zipcode but uses the monitoring networks that was installed by CARB starting in 1998. Along major freeways. With most zipcodes in the state without a single monitoring station. Even the urban areas seem to have less that 50% zipcode coverage. Zipcodes without even one monitoring station.
Su uses very simplistic and unsuitable mathematical models for the actual quality of the data sets used. Given the very low quality of the datasets Su uses you would need to use a far more sophisticated model to get results with a Confidence Interval that was n’t in the – Yeah, whatever range.
So up to the usual very high (i.e total garbage) CARB “research science” of the last forty plus years. But looking at who exactly is on the CARB Board and Research Screening Committee hardly surprising.
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/research-planning/research-screening-committee
Not exactly the most impressive bunch of people. Not seeing any people with any substantive scientific achievement in that motley group. Very much the Fourth Rate People of California science by the look of it. By design, perhaps?
Now lets look at the other CARB “research” and see if it is equally pathetic. As actual science. I dont expect to be surprised